Review: Kolker, Hidden Valley Road (2020)

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


[library]
Don and Mimi Galvin had twelve children, ten boys and two girls (in that order) Six of the ten boys developed schizophrenia (or another severe mental illness, the speculation that one brother might actually be bipolar gets kicked around the book but never really answered, if "really answered" is even an option). This book is two-pronged, one prong about the Galvin family and one prong about the research their case provided invaluable material for.

I read and greatly admired Robert Kolker's first book, Lost Girls, and I was not disappointed by Hidden Valley Road. Although Kolker erases himself from the text, his shadow nevertheless is very distinct: a relentless and patient interviewer, with a gift for asking the right question and then the right follow-up question. He paints a (horribly) vivid picture of what life was like on Hidden Valley Road, both the chaotic Lord of the Flies way the Galvins seem to have raised their children and the eruptions of schizophrenia. He makes it possible to watch one boy after another disappear into schizophrenia---disappear both in the literal sense of being institutionalized and in a more figurative sense, since it seemed to me that schizophrenia was like a pirate radio station, broadcasting its lies and gibberish more and more loudly on a frequency that had originally been Peter Galvin. Or Joe or Donald or Matt.

The sections on schizophrenia research are also the product of careful, patient interviewing, and Kolker doesn't try to hide the results, even though they're a lot of research for very few answers (and Big Pharma is called out for following money rather than the possibility of a cure). Nobody knows what causes schizophrenia, although the answer seems to be that it isn't any singular thing, but a host of genetic potentialities that get tripped by a child's environment and experiences as they grow. Nobody knows how to cure schizophrenia. The drugs that muffle the hallucinations also muffle the person and lead to long-term health problems. The Galvins believe, for pretty good reason, that two of the six brothers died because of the drugs they'd been prescribed for decades. Like Lost Girls, this is not a book that has answers, only more and better questions.



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Review: Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon (2017)

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book tells a number of different stories. There's the story of the murders of Mollie Burkhardt's family, the story of the FBI investigation of those murders (and the story of that megalomaniac J. Edgar Hoover and the creation of the FBI), and then the story of the journalist who starts researching those two stories only to find himself uncovering a different story. And I think Grann never quite got those stories to jell together, never quite got the delicate interconnected houses of cards to stand up properly, just as I can't find the metaphor I want to describe the phenomenon. I did not enjoy this book as much as The Lost City of Z, although it is an excellent book, and I think the reason is that Grann isn't directing traffic quite as deftly.

I spent the book simultaneously cynically unsurprised at what white people would do for money and absolutely aghast that not only would white people do these things, but other white people would let them get away with it and help them cover it up. The breadth and depth of the conspiracies (yes, very distinctly plural) to murder the Osage for their mineral rights are corrosively chilling and an important part of the story of the European colonization of America.



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