Title: bibliotherapy for the author
Review: I found this book infuriating. The entire first chapter is basically the author feeding the reader a predigested, much too reductive analysis of her family background. She seems overly invested in her status and her perception of herself as a "sensitive" person. This permeates the entire book; it's self-referential in the extreme and seems to have been written as bibliotherapy for the author in order to make herself feel better.She also lumps together the disabled, mentally ill, and simply "obnoxious" (!!) siblings as if there is no difference in who they are and how they have an impact on their families.I do think that this is an important subject, and has needed to be addressed in nonfiction for quite some time. (Authors of fiction have gotten there first; for example, Cathi Hanauer's MY SISTER'S BONES.)Finally, and, most important: what exactly IS "normal"? Who defines it? And why is it so important to be "normal," anyway?
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