Everything Is Fine

February 15, 2021
Probing memoir of a family tragedy and the search for explanations. Granata was 27 when his brother, Tim, "convinced that the woman who made him peanut butter sandwiches when he was a grass-stained child was the source of his constant pain," killed his mother. Ultimately, the court declared his brother to be not guilty "by reason of mental disease or defect....Defect, like there was a flaw in Tim's design, an error buried in the schematic for his brain." Arriving at that decision--and Granata's acceptance of it--involved developing a more granular understanding of schizophrenia and its effects than most of us carry in our minds. A critical component is anosognosia, a neurological effect that prevents a mentally ill person from recognizing the illness and substitutes for clinical terms something that, in the brother's case, approached a language of the hero quest: "spiritual warfare, the wrong path, demonic possession." About 300 mothers are killed by their children in the U.S. each year, and about two-thirds of those victims are slain by children who suffer from untreated mental illness--the key term being untreated. "Is there a link between untreated serious mental illness and violence against self or others? All of my language here needs to be clear, every word," writes the author. One of the problems is that sufferers often fail to take their medication. Confined to a Connecticut mental hospital for "a period that would likely span decades" after being found not guilty, Tim adopted a voluntary regimen of medication that has enabled him to see his actions differently and take responsibility for the act. Granata records his own sometimes discomfiting reactions to events, such as the impulse to turn his mother into a martyr and figuring out how to keep in balance the contradictory repulsion for and love for a desperately ill brother. Candid and carefully argued, Granata's memoir helps us better understand the horrors of mental illness.

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April 1, 2021

Borrowing its title from the subtle lie that his family used to tell themselves in texts and emails ("everything is fine"), Granata's poignant debut delves into loss and pain and living in the aftermath of tragedy. Beginning with the trauma of discovering that Granata's younger brother, Tim, had killed their mother in their childhood home, the author moves back in time to gracefully detail his mother's life as well as Tim's history of depression and suicidal ideation and its lasting effect on the entire family, including his father and two other siblings. Tim ultimately received a diagnosis of schizophrenia in his early 20s. Particularly moving sections of the book depict the family's loss of anonymity when the crime makes headline news, and Granata's visits to Tim in a psychiatric hospital in an attempt to reconnect with the brother he once knew. The author's delicate writing succeeds in painting a full portrait of Tim and shedding insight on the ongoing stigma of mental illness. VERDICT Granata's skills, as a writer and former English teacher, shine here; he not only brings a personal perspective to living alongside a family member with mental illness, but also shows that there isn't a right way to grieve. A welcome memoir.--Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2021
Granata's memoir of profound family tragedy is a monument to the work of remembering. A young teacher, Granata was a thousand miles from his Connecticut hometown when he got the call that his younger brother Tim, one of triplets, had killed their mom. Battling a form of schizophrenia, accompanied by anosognosia, an inability to recognize one's condition, which makes the disease even harder to treat, Tim would require months of treatment in order to remember what happened and stand trial. Granata confronts the avoidance of memories that first allowed him to go on--all roads, even happy moments, led to his mother's unimaginable end; his own naivete about Tim's disease and demons, and the places he put his anger. He also touches on the shortcomings in our mental-health-care system that his brother's illness exposed, even in a supportive, well-connected family like theirs. In candid, smoothly unspooling prose, Granata reconstructs life and memory from grief, writing a moving testament to the therapy of art, the power of record, and his immutable love for his family.

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