~ ~ ~One thing I've noticed is that most people who have read this book had it recommended to them as an adolescent. If you didn't-read it now!
This book is fascinating and extremely well written. Adults will probably have the perspective to enjoy it even more than adolescents do. I first read this book when I was 11,and I didn't quite understand it all, but it was still absorbing and fascinating. I reread it many times over the years, each reading feeling more swept away by Deborah's story. Now I'm 43 years old, an M.D., and I still love this book.
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The story of Deborah, a 16-year-old schizophrenic young Jewish girl, is told with amazing insight into the delusions and hallucinations of this type of mental illness. At the same time the "unreality" Deborah experiences is described so creatively, and evocatively, and is so rich and textured, that it is very easy to find yourself falling into "her" vision of the world. This is especially true when her rich fantasies are contrasted with the cold, impersonal and randomly cruel life of the hospital (unfortunately I believe this is a very accurate description of even what was a "good" psychiatric hospital in the 1950's).
-- Deborah's progress closer to "sanity" contains moments of clarity and connection so beautifully described, they can still bring me close to tears.
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If I could recommend only one book in the whole of Amazon.com: this would be the one!

One thing I've noticed is that most people who've read this book, read it first as an adolescent. If you didn't-read it now! This book is fascinating and extremely well written. Adullts will probably have the perspective to enjoy it even more than adolescents do. I first read this book when I was 11,and I didn't quite understand it all, but it caught me up, and I reread it many times over the years, each reading feeling more swept away by by Deborah's story. Now I'm 43 years old, an M.D., and I still love this book. The story of Deborah, a 16 y.o. schizophrenic young jewish girl, is told with amazing insight into the delusions and hallucinations of this type of mental illness. At the same time the "unreality" Deborah experiences is described so creatively, and evocatively, and is so rich and textured, that it is very easy to find yourself falling into "her" vision of the world. This is especially true when her rich fantasies are contrasted with the cold, impersonal and randomly cruel life of the hospital(unfortunately I believe this is a very accurate description of even what was a "good" pyschiatric hospital in the 1950's).
Deborah's progress closer to "sanity" contains moments of clarity and connection so beautifully described, they can still bring me close to tears. If I could recommend only one book in the whole of Amazon.com: this would be the one!

I always loved this book when I was a teenager - I must have read it at least 4-5 times (actually, I'm an avid reader, so that isn't really that unusual). However, I have just re-read the book at 30, after 5 years of treatment for my own mental disorders, and have seen so much in the book that I never saw before. Perhaps this book appealed to me so much as an unkowingly sick teen because I could relate to Deborah Blau, although her disorder is of an entirely different type and scale from mine.

I must say that this book should be required reading for anyone dealing with a loved-one's journey towards mental health. One thing people without these problems can't understand is that it is easier to stay sick - that getting healthy is hard work, scary, and LONG! And along the way, the symptoms may get worse, while you're actually getting better. This book is the first time I've seen someone try to explain this phenomenom - that the mentally ill cling to their symptoms as to a life-line, using them as protection while they heal, until the reach the point where those symptoms are no longer needed.

After re-reading this book, I understand my own treatment so much better, and will recommend it to my loved-ones who have to deal with my treatment - maybe they can get a glimmer of understanding. It is rare in this world for any "healthy" person to truly understand mental illness

An account of astoundingly boring, privileged white people, who prattle on to absolutely no end about their astoundingly boring, privileged white ancestors, and then whine and cry over how a particularly favoured astoundingly boring, privileged white relative died, almost always in circumstances related in some manner to a combination of being astoundingly boring and/or privileged, but assuredly white.

The book does take occasional side tracks to insult Native American cultures, but is primarily concerned with the thoughts and feelings of astoundingly boring, privileged white people.

One book was quite enough from the astoundingly boring, privileged white author that was Hannah Green.

I bought _The Dead of the House_ in 1973 because I'd read excerpts from it in _The New Yorker_. Of course, the experience of taking it off the shelf (and noting that I paid $5.95 for it) was like holding a version of myself twenty-vice years ago. The book has a curious structure -- long passages of it are presented as the grandfather reading from the family history he wrote. I wish the "coming-of-age" aspect of it had been given more emphasis. The narrator's relationship with the doomed Dirk does recall a simpler, more innocent but at the same time more sinister era in the annals of young love. The sketch in _Contemporary Authors_ indicated that Ms. Green was at work on two more autobiographical novels, both of which had titles but neither of which evidently, was ever published. Readers who liked this book might enjoy _Hula_ by Lisa Shea -- same theme, same style, but dark dark dark

The Dead of the House is all your other reviewers have said-- and more. It is, as the original publishers (Doubleday) said, about life and the land, time passing, blood ties, character traits that endure. Wallace Stegner, a master, wrote of it,in part: "This is a warm, loving, profoundly felt, and moving evocation of a family...whenever I want to remind myself of how it felt to be young, I am going back to read the section entitled 'Summer Afternoon, Summer Afternoon.'This is evocation at the level of magic." First published by Doubleday in 1972 (4 portions were published in The New Yorker) it was brought back in a handsome paperback edition by Turtle Point more recently. The "two autobiographical novels" referred to above were in the writing more than 20 years, until the author's death. A new book, The Little Saint, will appear in 2000 via Random House. It is the story of life in a French village, Conques, which Hannah and her husband Jack Wesley, the artist, stayed in over and over, and the "golden spark" at its center, the remains of a 12 year old girl who, refusing to renounce her faith, was beheaded and , centuries later, canonized. It is in part the story of how an American writer from Ohio, a Protestant, a "stranger to saints," Hannah Green, became enchanted by the legend and presence of Ste. Foy, who left this world - perhaps - in the year 303.

If you already have an intense interest in St. Foy, or in the Aveyron region of France, you will enjoy this book. It contains some beautifully written passages and warm, honest sentiment.
It also contains a lot of minutely detailed descriptions of places, people, encounters, artistic impressions, religious experiences, scholarly and historical research, cultural observations... What it does not contain is any narrative momentum. All the lovely writing is strung together without any context. Who is this woman who went to all the trouble to document her experiences in Conques over the years? The reader is left with very little idea. After a while, you'll just want it to stop.

This book is first an account of a religious awakening, which occurs when the author, interested in this little traveled part of France and its patron saint, experiences something mystical and mysterious. As a basically non-religious person, however, I found her description quite opaque. (The author also has the annoying habit of writing very, very long sentences.) I thought this book worked a lot better as one of the "Year in Provence/Bella Tuscany" genre--particularly because it is focused much more on the people and culture, and not on a home improvement project. The author's own nationality and culture are very much in the background, and there is not an ounce of condescension in her descriptions. Interestingly, this book was published posthumously: the author died in 1996, and I have a sense that the book, which is set in the late 1970's, may have been written much earlier than others in its more well-known travel genre category. For a much more accessible, beautifully written account of religious experience and community, try a slim, simple novella called "Lying Awake" by Salzman.

Do you like to visit foreign lands without having to take the time and expense of actually traveling there? Well, this book is a marvelous example of actually visiting the small village of Conques in south France. We get to meet people and places, hear tales and myths, and share a little bit in the author's own feelings and spiritual experiences at a saint's shrine. This is a good read, but not very exciting. Very true to life.