Laurie Fox

Fascinating study of two sisters, one semi normal and the other emotionally and mentally ill. A wild ride encased in the culture of the 60's and very early 70's. I was smitten with the descriptions of their fantasy play time. I throughly related to escaping into a fantasy world to lure one into dreamland. It resonated with familiar memories of my childhood soothing mechanisms of coping.

I would have given it more stats and I wanted to but I did not take much from this book other than a hazy glimpse of my long ago childhood. The destiny of the mentally ill sister causes me great concern.… (plus d'informations)

So life’s too short for tiresome reads, so I’ll be quick. Confusingly marketed as an “autobiographical novel”, My Sister from the Black Lagoon starts out promisingly as Laurie Fox/Lorna Person tells of growing up in 50s/60s Southern California with her “crazy” sister Lonnie—who shouts colorful murder threats, fears toast with sharp edges, cares for a veritable menagerie of reptiles, and terrorizes babysitters, but has also, Lorna thinks, the sweetest insides of anyone she knows. It’s both comically weird and weirdly real how this early passage paints the dysfunction that is the status quo from the family members’ attempts to cope: be it weekly therapy (for stressed stay-at-home mom), a consuming music hobby (for short-tempered TV-business dad), or a frightening elaborate fantasy life (for Lorna herself).

But soon the novel shifts from the focus on her sister and their family life into Lorna’s struggles growing up. It’s all typical obnoxious stuff, really, like why don’t I have more friends and first love angst and won’t I ever be a famous actress and my parents have a loveless 50s marriage and it was the 60s so there was lots of weed—particular emphasis on the I was just so tragically born as a person who feels too much all of which is terribly dull, predictable, and, given the claim of autobiographical basis, frankly seems like mega-self-absorption. At about the point about where Lorna says that her dates with her first boyfriend (the most truthful person on the planet) were all cry session in which he really listened to the truly deep pain within her (a development sans any irony), I figured I'd cut my losses.… (plus d'informations)

An interesting story about how mental illness impacts not only the individual but also the family. The story is set in the 1950's - 1970's in Burbank California. Lonnie is the older sister with the mental illness. Lorna is her younger sister and the story centers around her and how she grew up and learned to ignore or accept aspects of her sister. The characters of the mother and father were very interesting in that they had the "typical" male/female roles established but when it came to being the strong one in the family the father had the brute strength but not the emotional ability to handle his daughters. There were parts of the story that dragged on and didn't add much to furthering the story line, overall it was a decent read and an interesting story.… (plus d'informations)