10 Comments

I’ve was on the waiting list at the local library for 6 weeks for Hidden Valley Road. I am halfway through this book and can’t believe I’m still reading. I couldn’t wait to read it but it reads like a textbook to me. There is no skilled language in the writing. My feelings for the parents went from feeling for them to not understanding them to just not giving a care for these people. More harsh than I need to be, but there you have it.

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I read Hidden Valley Road, and was kind of horrified— by the parents’ callousness, perhaps, or self-absorption? But my biggest take away was the idea that, regarding mental illness, there can be a predisposition that is never manifested or “triggered” or the opposite— but either way it is quite an enigma. I felt perhaps most sympathetic for those poor daughters that were/are the victims of systematic physical and verbal abuse by their own brothers. It got to me, that book.

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I was also on the waiting list for Hidden Valley Road from the library, then it arrived and I was like "meh" and stopped reading pretty early on. I didn't find the writing very compelling.

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I enjoyed Hidden valley road, but maybe more because I’m a physician as was very fascinated (but yet horrified) by this families plight. We really do have a very long way to go on our treatment of schizophrenia unfortunately.

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Ugh. Last week I hit a wall every single day. This article is the best summation of how I feel about it all: https://gen.medium.com/i-hate-talking-about-the-pandemic-wall-f66fd716f2fd

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