The Four of Us: The Story of a Family

Swados devouts a section each to her mother, father and brother, and finally, herself. In a torrential-at-times rush of prose she describes a youth spent dealing with her mom's and schizophrenic brother's odd behavior - due to mental illness - which was never named, explained or treated with much compassion by her hyperactive, determined-to-succeed-at-all-costs father. Swados shows herself as a young child, imaginative, resourceful and creative, who managed, after a self-destrucive period, to develop into an imaginative, resourceful and creative adult. Her brother, Lincoln, especially comes alive for the reader, as a budding writer and cartoonist whose schizophrenia was never adequately treated (due in part to Lincoln's own obstinence) who later died. Swados' job from childhood on, she tells us, was to be the well child, the success her father could tell stories about to his friends. She well describes the toll that took on her. Yet there is much love and compassion, among the occasionally hurt and bitter memories. Recommended.

Swados, Elizabeth. The four of us. The story of a family. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, c1991. (Book review) In the history of disease is there any other that wreaks as much havoc on family life as does mental illness? Elizabeth Swados, a successful author and musician, shares her story of a family torn apart by dysfunction, culminating in dual suicide. The family's inability to cope with the symptoms of schizophrenia, "with severe paranoid tendencies" of Elizabeth's older and talented brother (Lincoln), serves as the cornerstone for this memoir. By devoting a separate chapter to each family member, Swados succeeds in conveying the effect of Lincoln's illness on individual family members and, ultimately, on the family as a whole. In attempting to come to terms with her mother's depression, which has rendered her "unreachable," Swados observes that "research in mental illness hadn't come up with an explanation of schizophrenia that might have lessened some of the blame on her." This criticism of psychiatry `s inability to relieve the feelings of frustration and helplessness experienced by family members, while harsh, is not uncommon. While this memoir may be fraught with tragedy, the Swados family is, in many respects, representative of all families. Thus, the child, Elizabeth, remains blissfully unaware of her brother's "struggle with hospitalizations and medications" over an extended period of time. Her admission that "what I knew at the time was that my brother went to college and never returned" is a reminder of the extent to which families go to protect the innocence of youth. It also suggests that one of our major tasks as adults lies in reconstructing our family histories, based on our own memories and those of others.