My Brother's Madness: A Memoir

by Paul Pines

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Author: Paul Pines

Publisher: Curbstone Books

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 1931896348
ISBN 13: 978-1931896344

My Brother's Madness is based on the author's relationship with his brother—who had a psychotic breakdown in his late forties—and explores the unfolding of two intertwined lives and the nature of delusion. Circumstances lead one brother from juvenile crime on the streets of Brooklyn to war-torn Vietnam, to a fast-track life as a Hollywood publicist to owning and operating The Tin Palace, one of New York's most legendary jazz clubs, while his brother falls into, and fights his way back from, a delusional psychosis.

My Brother's Madness is part thriller, part exploration that not only describes the causes, character, and journey of mental illness, but also makes sense of it. It is ultimately a story of our own humanity, and answers the question, Am I my brother's keeper?

From Publishers Weekly

In this gracefully written memoir, poet and novelist (and practicing psychotherapist) Pines narrates his and his younger brother's lives through the matrix of his brother's mental illness. A bright and sensitive child, Claude Pines was damaged by his parents' divorce, an unstable mother and relentless persecution at the hands of his father's monstrous second wife. The story alternates between scenes from the Pines brothers' childhood and Claude's descent into paranoid schizophrenia, an illness that began to assert itself when Claude was a promising medical student and which inexorably drove him into a marginal life. The author deftly handles the complex structure, and the writing compels with rich characters, black humor and clear evocations of locales ranging from an upper-class Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1950s to the drug-blighted Alphabet City of Manhattan's Lower East Side of the 1960s. Paul Pines resists making easy diagnoses and illustrates the complicated relationship between environmental and hereditary causes for a disease like Claude's. While the narrative loses some of its intensity over its last third as Claude slowly remakes himself as spokesperson for his fellow sufferers and Paul settles into a solid middle-class life, it remains engaging throughout. Never descending into easy sentimentality, Pines portrays the family tragedy of mental illness and the bare possibility of redemption we have in this life. (Oct.)
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Review

"Few books nourish the psyche and stir the heart as much as My Brother's Madness." —David Unger, author of Life in the Damn Tropics

"One of the most moving, familial, shocking and, ultimately, healing tales." — E.M. Broner, author of A Weave of Woman

"With unflinching honesty, My Brother's Madness charts the impossible tangle of loyalty, kindness, bravery and bitter conflict... A remarkable book." —Joan Silber, author of Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories

"This tender and troubling book captures the hilarities, poignant victories, and deep regrets that define our lives." —Fred Waitzkin, author of Searching for Bobby Fischer

"Uplifting and gut-wrenching...books by Paul Pines are like the films of Terrence Malick. They don't come around often, but when they do, you owe it to yourself to check them out." —Rob Wilson, Associate Producer of the films Comandante and World Trade Center

"Paul Pines has achieved a story both profoundly personal and universal, an exploration of the trials of family, the breaking points in our psyche's powers, and yet the capacity of compassion to ride the worst of storms all the way home." —James Hollis, author of Why Good People Do Bad Things

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My Brother's Madness: A Memoir