Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

**Mild spoilers**
So I enjoyed this read but came away after it was done feeling like nothing really happened in the end? The book starts out detailing the lives of the parents and the births of 12 kids. You can see where the details of 12 kids being born and growing up might get a little tedious. Then you read about each one of them psychologically breaking and getting sent to the mental hospital then sent home, then sent back, which also gets tedious. In the end none of them really get an effective cure, some of them have died and the worst sick son never faces any consequences for his actions.

I guess I was waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel but it never really happened. Not to say it wasn't interesting but after it was over, I was like.. OK.

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cmanner's review

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informative medium-paced

4.0

It wasn't what I hoped it would be; it was really more like a dry biography of the least interesting and least sick members of the family, touching briefly on the sick ones. However it did also cover some of the history of the study of schizophrenia and the search for treatment which as a scientist I found fascinating.

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dr4manrx's review against another edition

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hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

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barelyconcealed's review

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4.0

In many ways this book is as much about the treatment of schizophrenia across the 20th century as it is about the pressures that are placed on girl children to be caretakers rather than simply children.

I liked this better than Kolker's previous work, but this ultimately is a touch uneven. There are a lot of people in the Calvin family and attempting to keep them straight is incredibly difficult, more so because the narrative is largely linear - except when it isn't.

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gretchenplz's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

4.0

I'm glad I read this after watching the "documentary" about the family.

The production and narrative laid out by the documentary really rubbed me the wrong way, and I feel so much better after hearing this much more humanized version of the Galvin family.

This story is incredibly sad, but at its heart, it's about 14 people who are just trying their best, all dealing with incredibly deep levels of trauma in the only ways they know how.

My criticism is that Mary/Lindsey is very much an unreliable narrator. Very much gives a martyr complex. Again, I empathize with her trauma, her feelings of responsibility for her sick brothers, and her frustration with her non-sick siblings, but I feel conflicted, especially knowing the trauma she inflicted on her own kids. However, I think the author did a great job researching and writing from all POVs and not just relying on one person for the story.

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