Rate this book

Blue Genes: A Memoir Of Loss And Survival (2008)

by Christopher Lukas(Favorite Author)

3.32 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0385525206 (ISBN13: 9780385525206)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Doubleday

review 1: I picked this up from the "new nonfiction" section of the library and thought it looked interesting. The author's family has a history of mental illness and suicide. His mother committed suicide when he was just a child and it had a profound effect on him. The book was interesting and a good reminder of how much childhood experiences affect the psyche of an adult. However, by the end, I got really tired of the constant psycho-analysis by the author; indeed, when I read that he as a psychology major in college, it made a lot of sense. EVERYTHING was put in the frame of psychology and the author's conclusions often seemed a bit off.
review 2: Home sick from work and I read this book today. It's really good, very sad, very articulate. Lukas begins the books... more with an early scene between his brother and himself when they were very young--4 and 6, I think, then goes to being told his brother killed himself. Next he takes us on a journey through his family history--his grandparents, his parents, especially his mother's early life, his parent's marriage, his brother's birth, his own, her suicide and them growing up without a mother, and all they went through. Next he chronicles the relationship he had with Tony as adults. Christoper worked in television and Tony was a journalist and author who won two Pulitzer Prizes. The book is about their relationship and also about the legacy of depression, bi-polar depression, and suicide--his grandmother, mother, uncle, aunt, brother, and his dad drank himself to death--in the Lukas family and in all families. Very informative, yet very personal. less

Download links for: Blue Genes: A Memoir of Loss and Survival

Advertising