Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family's Schizophrenia

I really enjoyed this book immensely. It was so sad and it hit home with my own feelings. I was impressed with his writing and the history was great and the best part was his love for his sisters. It was shared already with several people that have children affected by this disease by far the worst disease on earth. It robs young people of a life. I enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it.

It was difficult for me to make myself read Patrick Tracey's book because his story is too much like my own. My Irish ancestors, like Mr. Tracey's, came from County Roscommon in the wake of the Irish Famine and worked in cotton and woolen mills in Providence. Mr. Tracey captures the experience of having loved ones "taken" by schizophrenia and the resulting family disruptions with painful eloquence. Much as I appreciate that part of the book, what I most appreciated was the research into the genetic and environmental factors that have gone into making this horrible disease such a part of the Irish experience. Finally, an explanation. Maybe, someday, a cure.

Since I've known Patrick Tracey from way back in the debauching days I had heard many of these family stories but never imagined he would eventually craft them into such a compelling book. When a friend publishes a book it is always a relief to find out it just doesn't suck. In this case I can honestly say I don't have to scrape up a single polite platitude. It is just plain well-done. Old Ireland, Family & Madness is pretty much the trifecta of a potential slough of maudlin dreck, but Tracey manages to tread perfectly through the bog, capturing the genuine pathos of family tradgedy and the facinating science (more precisely, the maddeningly elusive lack of science)that is schizophrenia.

I didn't so much read as devour Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for The Roots of my Family's Schizophrenia, in which writer Patrick Tracey travels to Ireland to unravel the origins of his Irish-American family's multi-generational struggle with schizophrenia. Two of Tracey's sisters, his uncle, his grandmother, and a grandmother several generations back have been victims of the brain disorder. Tracey had the discipline to hold back the drama and fireworks that many writers would have been tempted to include in a book about schizophrenia. His love for his sisters is so palpable and sweet that it makes what happens to them stand out starkly and heartbreakingly in a way that histrionics could not. The structure--part memoir, part history, part Travels with Charley, part detective nonfiction--and Tracey's insight, honesty, and sense of humor make the book a page-turner. He writes easily about the dry stuff, which all too often writers can make stultifying: history, medicine, mythology. Tracey's journey through Ireland past and present is a worthy read unto itself. Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for The Roots of my Family's Schizophrenia will share space on my bookshelf with others that have changed my way of looking at the human brain and helped me understand a little about what it's like to live with mental illness or mental differences: An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jameson, about bipolar disorder; and Temple Grandin's Thinking in Pictures, about autism, among them. The book is a beautiful gift to Tracey's sisters; to families whose pasts, presents, and futures have been and will be marked by schizophrenia; to all of us who have struggled or have loved anyone who has; and to all who are seeking understanding about ourselves and about love.

I am so thoroughly enjoying this book, even though my heart breaks on each page. Tracey has researched farther back than I could even fathom tracing my own family tree. His tales about his family are interesting and so well told that I can see the houses. I feel as if I know the great-grandmother, I can almost feel her pain. He describes schizophrenia in words that I have never heard before. It has opened another level of understanding. The horror that is losing someone in the blink of an eye, having them replaced with a different person, is terrifying. I found myself checking my age versus the statistics, wondering if my own children are safe. My heart goes out to him for all of his tragedy. But I do so appreciate his ability to put it into words and on paper for everyone to experience.