Pamela Spiro Wagner
Auteur van Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia
Over de Auteur
Fotografie: Phoebe Spiro Wagner
Werken van Pamela Spiro Wagner
Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Pseudoniemen en naamsvarianten
- Wagner, Phoebe Spiro
- Geboortedatum
- 1952-11-17
- Geslacht
- female
- Relaties
- Spiro, Carolyn (twin sister)
Leden
Besprekingen
Lijsten
Prijzen
Statistieken
- Werken
- 2
- Leden
- 245
- Populariteit
- #92,910
- Waardering
- 3.7
- Besprekingen
- 7
- ISBNs
- 6
Carolyn, on the other hand, while more successful professionally and clearly quite intelligent herself, grew more unlikable as a narrator the deeper I got into the book. If I had been the editor, I would have suggested some judicious cuts. For example, no doubt Carolyn has been through hell and back and experienced torment that few of us can even imagine. However, her tone was self-pitying, self-focused, and sometimes downright petty. I think her plight would have provoked far more emotion in me if she had simply laid it out as it happened rather than reminding me, the reader, how burdened she was by her sister's illness, and then how ashamed she was for feeling that way. But the pettiness in particular got to me. For example, I tired of hearing her describe her sister's weight gain on one of the anti-psychotics. To me that's a one-and-done comment, especially since Pamela mentions it as a reason why she would quit the drug, but it appeared again and again in Carolyn's narrative. I was completely flabbergasted by her unfair treatment of her ex-husband in the book, when it had absolutely nothing to do with the narrative of her sister's schizophrenia. To lay out his faults--including her assessment of his lack of sexual prowess--felt deeply unfair and irrelevant, and I think it was at that point when I turned. I have no idea why Carolyn's editor at St. Martin's didn't save her from this mistake.
I was also flummoxed by Carolyn's seeming lack of understanding of schizophrenia when she has not only treated schizophrenics in the past, but is apparently a highly respected psychiatrist. When it came to Pamela, it was as if she'd never heard of schizophrenia before, was unable to make sense of what I think are fairly trademark symptoms--even after Pamela was diagnosed. I certainly believe that she had a blind spot, but I would have liked to have had her explore this blind spot in more depth rather than spend time on her blasted ex-husband or her new "lover" Johan. What was her experience as a psychiatrist like? What kind of psychiatrist was Carolyn? How did she approach her work? Didn't she go into this line of work because of her sister? It seemed to me that Carolyn limited her narration to her experience of phone calls in the middle of the night from mental hospitals, her visits to those hospitals, and the domestic issues going on in the background. I would very much have liked to have known about Carolyn's professional experience, her accomplishments, her approach to her work, and how that might tie back to her experience with her sister.
So clearly I was disappointed by that aspect of the dual narrative, and I suspect that early readers of the manuscript or even her later editors may have pushed her to include banal details about her personal life to demonstrate how Carolyn was the one able to live a normal life while Pamela had to live in this prison of her mind. I just don't think it worked. But I'm grateful they've shared their stories.… (meer)