UNCLE! I made it to 158 and just could not finish this terrible book. I received this as a Goodreads Giveaway. It goes without saying that this did not influence my review. Here are some of the problems with this book, in no particular order.

1) The author has no idea what story he is telling. There are several possibilities (none all that interesting) and he can't seem to decide on a narrative. I had thought this would be an examination of how a promising boy with every imaginable advantage could end up on the street. It was not that.

2) None of von Ziegesar's friends or family are interesting. That is not a dig, most people are not that interesting. That is why most people do not have books written about them.

3) The author includes exhausting detail on the most absurd things. You will know every feature of his wife's outfits (which are not good), the precise streetscape of every single street he is on (and there are many), the contents of every bag, glass, drawer, etc. Every person, no matter how incidental is described as if we were to be tasked with creating a police sketch at the end of the paragraph. I could not think of an example so I opened the book at random and this is the first sentence I saw (about the office of a psychiatrist his brother saw and who does not matter to the story): "A vase of artificial flowers; an Impressionist print in a yellowing mat: a kitsch drawing of a ballerina; some low-slung Danish modern furniture, circa 1960, recovered in brown material; an air conditioner; wall outlets and a small, conical air purifier (whose main function was probably to drown out the confessions of patients), all in yellowing ivory plastic like bad teeth." Mr. von Ziegasar, I have read Proust and understand the beauty of the mundane, and you are no Proust.

4) Lifetime movies notwithstanding, people affected by mental illness do not all start out as wonderful people who are then magically transformed into monsters, like some werewolf tale. Some people are horrible and nasty and then they become mentally ill. The author's stepbrother is one of these people. The fact that he is an asshole does not mean that this guy deserves schizophrenia. It is a terrible illness and no one deserves to be ill. Still, he is an asshole, spoiled and petulant, and it is hard to really care about him. His appearances in the story are only sporadic, but to the extent this book has any structure it is built around this jerk so it would be handy if there were a reason to care if he lives or dies.

5) Someone stop this guy before he uses another metaphor or simile. I began to involuntarily wince when I sensed another was coming.

There is more, but continuing the list would be piling on. Sorry to be so negative, I am sure the writer is a perfectly fine person, but I seriously could not think of a single positive thing to say. ( )

The Looking Glass Brother
So many homeless mentally ill people appear in newspaper articles. I’ve always looked at it as a problem, but probably not one that my family would ever face. “Big” Peter Von Ziegesar’s story of his family and his mentally ill brother changed how I looked at this problem. Von Ziegesar’s step-brother has struggled with mental illness. He’s spent time in jail for physical violence, he’s been in rehab and has bounced around from city to city. When “Little” Peter shows up in New York City, Big Peter is determined to help him. Cleaning him up, paying for food and room, doesn’t lead to improvement in Little Peter. This book is more than just a sad story about Little Peter, it is the story of their family. Summers in Long Island at his maternal great-grandmother’s compound sound idyllic, but the family is fractured and Big Peter’s struggles are included. This is a memoir that will stay with me for many days. The looking glass brother reflects back on me to show the bleak life of the mentally ill. GOODREADS review copy. ( )