Synopsis
The moving story of the author's talented family, which is haunted by the tragedy of the first child's schizophrenia. Four essays, one for each family member's story, combine to create a complex and resonant picture of the four sides of a family rectangle.
Reviews
YA-- Creative genius and madness come together in Swados's powerful memoir of her talented family haunted by tragedy. In four essays, she limns a schizophrenic older brother driven to destitution by his demons; an ambitious workaholic lawyer-father; a suicidal actress-mother; and herself, an artistic rebel. YAs will relate to this ruthlessly honest recollection that puts faces to the painful problems of the homeless and the dysfunctional family. Best of all, however, it gives a face to a survivor, the remarkable young woman who is now a successful stage composer and writer. An unforgettable, splendid affirmation of life.
- Betta Hedlund, Mary Riley Styles Public Library, Falls Church, VA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Described by avant-garde composer Swados as "reverberations put into words," these memoirs ring flat. Born in 1950, the author and her brilliant, schizophrenic older brother were raised by well-to-do parents in Buffalo, N.Y. In four parts, one devoted to each family member, she describes the progressive illness of her brother, Lincoln, a street performer in New York City's Lower East Side before his death from emphysema at 46, and his continuing importance to her. Revealing the unpredictable emotional states of both her creative, depressed mother, who committed suicide in the early '70s, and her domineering lawyer father, to whom this volume is dedicated, Swados details her own youth and schooling, her years at the experimental LaMama theater in Manhattan, and her travels. Although lifted occasionally by a pleasing phrase, Swados's account is heavy with reiterated material and a pompous, self-serving tone. While the sections concentrating on her brother and herself display some depth of understanding, those about her parents seem remote and superficial; in all, the author holds center stage.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Swados (Listening Out Loud, 1988, etc.), a writer/composer best known for the musical Runaways, offers a painful memoir of growing-up in a family beset by mental illness--with compelling ghastliness in many of the details but insufficient overall drama or insight. A brief prologue introduces the family: the Swadoses--Jewish, upper middle class--in 1950's and 1960's Buffalo, where ``appearance was everything.'' Then come four long chapters, each focusing on one member of the family. First, and always foremost, is Elizabeth's schizophrenic older brother, Lincoln: eccentric, filthy, and brilliant as a child, he fell wildly ill during college, attempted suicide at 24 (losing an arm and a leg), and became a Lower East Side ``character'' who eventually died in wretched isolation. Next Swados turns to her depressed, alcoholic mother--sporadically creative but ``in her heart...a lonely orphan'' who committed suicide when the pressures (her son's condition, her suffocating marriage) became too much. Then there is father Robert, who reacted to the family illnesses (including his mother's schizophrenia) with rage and sheer activity, losing himself in an all-consuming sports-law career. And finally there's Elizabeth herself, always driven to be ``the child about whom my father could tell stories to his clients'': She overachieved like crazy, composing and performing, getting admitted to Bennington at 16, scoring Medea at La Mama for Andrei Serban at 19; she also exhausted herself with wild living, determined not to be like her conformist parents. The four-part structure here makes for a repetitious and often anticlimactic narrative, without satisfying shape or development. Swados's prose doesn't have enough variety or grace to fill out such an ambitious design. But her sincere attempt to understand her family's misery is often affecting, and the story of brother ``Lincoln Sail'' (as he called himself) is, though disjointed, grimly fascinating. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Swados, author of Leah and Lazar ( LJ 7/82) as well as various theater, film, and television productions, here digs deep inside her own psyche as well as those of her parents and deceased brother (who was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic). Her quest is to find answers and, perhaps, to raise deeper questions regarding mental illness and the tragic impact it had on her seemingly normal Jewish Buffalo family. Four separate essays tell each family member's story (including her own) and attempt to analyze the dynamics among individuals that led to the family's disintegration, which culminated in the deaths of both her brother and mother. This book appears to be an exercise in catharsis. Like a successful application of psychotherapy, its overall effect is thought-provoking and interesting rather than depressing and tedious, so it is easy to forgive Swados for coming across as a bit self-indulgent at times. Recommended for general collections.
- Susan Brombacher, "Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality"
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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