I didn’t cry until page 123 of Lisa Genova’s terrific new novel "Inside the O'Briens". That’s when 44-year-old Boston police officer Joe O’Brien calmly explains to his four young adult offspring that his “weird temper”; his frequent toe-tapping, shoulder-shifting, and eyebrow lifting; and his inability to sequence the events in a routine crime report, are all due to Huntington’s disease (HD).
As a boy, Joe believed the neighborhood talk that his institutionalized mother was an alcoholic. He remembers his skeletal, writhing, grimacing and grunting mother as a monster, not as someone suffering from a neurological disease only trying to say “I love you” to her terrified son. Read More
As a boy, Joe believed the neighborhood talk that his institutionalized mother was an alcoholic. He remembers his skeletal, writhing, grimacing and grunting mother as a monster, not as someone suffering from a neurological disease only trying to say “I love you” to her terrified son. Read More
