Inside the O'Brien's - Lisa Genova

Gratitude and love. Joe replays the memory, and he sees his mother again and anew. Unable to walk or feed herself, unable to defend her reputation from the rumors that she was a drunk and a sinner and a bad mother, unable to live at home or hug her kids or tuck them into bed at night, she's smiling with her eyes at Joe.

Inside the O'Brien's, Lisa Genova 

If I'm completely honest, I almost cried reading this chapter. And you must know that I never cry for anything fictional.  Lisa Genova has done it once again, entangling a story of pain and love into my heart. Awakening a new realization of Huntington's Disease and the horrors of it.

I love Lisa Genova's books because they showcase, if you will, atypical diseases that are oftentimes ignored in today's society. Huntington's Disease is an incurable, fatal and hereditary disease. It causes it's victims to gradually lose all voluntary control. It was at times painful to read this book. Huntington's has been called the cruelest disease known to man, and Lisa captured every fear and horror of this disease through her words. I do find it personally frustrating that people with diseases like Huntington's, or even Alzheimer's, are often considered outcasts in society. Yet they cannot control their "weird" behaviors. I agree that cancer is also a terrible disease, but why is it that cancer patients are hailed as heroes in their death or victory, and everyone roots for them, runs marathons in their honor and... yet the family who suffers from Huntington's Disease, or Alzheimer's is pushed aside into a dark corner? Lisa explores the gruesome journey of having Huntington's, and it broke my heart. She is demonstrating that cancer is not the only disease that haunt's the human race. 

Despite the shadow cast over this book due to such a serious disease, the O'Brien family managed to find hope. And then the rest of the book seems to only be the dark before the dawn. Huntington's is real, but Lisa Genova proved that so is hope. It was an inspiring story, and I encourage you to read this book sometime this year. I could not put it down and I feel that the book has had such an impact on me, that I just want to leave it out for a bit before placing it back on the shelves. 

The ending of the book was probably the most confusingly satisfying. Some things may be left unsaid, yet it gives the book a final sense of hope and peace. The message throughout the book was attempting to live every moment of life. Since the symptoms of Huntington's generally begin in the late thirties, the victims are almost sure to die a young death. One of Joe's daughter's worried about her future constantly, as the child of a parent with Huntington's Disease has a 50/50 chance of inheriting the disease. She is faced with the  hard choice of finding out if she will develop the disease through a genetic test or of leaving her gene status unknown.

Although I loved this book dearly and would highly recommend it, it did have one flaw: The language. I do understand that rage and anger are typically symptoms of Huntington's, yet this book used unpleasant words quite often. As a person who doesn't swear, I did find the language a bit disturbing and distracting from the main focus of the book.

In the end, however, this book had a profound impact on me. For some reason, I dived completely into this book and it left its mark. Lisa Genova has once again created a masterpiece. 

To see Lisa Genova talk about this book, click here