The only thing misleading about Blue Genes: A Memoir Of Loss And Survival , a moving tale of how self-inflicted death leaves wounds in the living, is the title. While acknowledging the genetic predisposition towards depression in the title, author Christopher Lukas barely touches on what that means. This is a book about nurture more than nature.
Although recognizing that his family is genetically predisposed to severe depression, Lukas nonetheless searches for understanding in the events of the individuals' lives. He clearly grasps the genetic factor and both brilliantly and emotionally describes the symptomatology, but never quite gets you inside a depressive's head to understand the actual mindset of depression.
Of course, that is a tall order. As one who also comes from a family with a history of clinical depression (though thankfully not suicide) and having fought a fierce battle with the illness myself a decade past, the only writer who I have seen achieve this is William Styron in his memoir of depression, Darkness Visible.
That said, Blue Genes is a very moving memoir of two brothers cyclically driven incredibly close and vastly apart in a world where depression and suicide were the rule, not the exception. Through reliving his memories of his older brother, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tony Lukas, from their early youth to Tony's suicide in 1992 at the age of 59, the author comes to understand himself better. Stretched out as it is from the Great Depression through to the Modern Age, this is a moving look at how siblings hurt, protect, and shape each other over a lifetime.
---David Norman
imagineatrium.com
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