In 1954, researchers at the newly formed National Institute of Mental Health set out to study the genetics of schizophrenia. When they got word that four 24-year-old identical quadruplets in Lansing, Michigan, had all been diagnosed with the mental illness, they could hardly believe their ears. Here was incontrovertible proof of hereditary transmission and, thus, a chance to bring international fame to their fledgling institution. The case of the pseudonymous Genain quadruplets, they soon found, was hardly so straightforward. Contrary to fawning media portrayals of a picture-perfect Christian family, the sisters had endured the stuff of nightmares. Behind closed doors, their parents had taken shocking measures to preserve their innocence while sowing fears of sex and the outside world.
The Morloks’ life stories come to us...via diaries, letters, medical records and interviews with the last remaining quadruplet ... Farley fills in the gaps with interesting-but-not-totally-relevant stories from the life of David Rosenthal, a scientist at NIMH who edited a 1963 book about the quadruplets ... The historical sections are well done, but the book too often reads like an argument about the social origins of mental illness rather than a narrative about a family tragedy. The result is not entirely satisfying ... People who pick up a book like this to spend time with a human story about a family that was severely tested may find themselves somewhat disappointed.
Fascinating ... Farley makes rich use of clinical records and the material gathered by N.I.M.H. researchers dispatched to interview neighbors, teachers, classmates and relatives of the quadruplets ... The violence and dysfunction Farley describes is gothically sordid, painful to read about and entirely believable ... More concerned with the mythic and metaphorical than the medical ... The challenge for the reader, and for psychiatry, is that emblematic importance, much like untreated mental illness, can be more mask than illumination.
Mysticism about multiples and America’s affair with eugenics are just some of the intriguing background Farley presents for context ... Reads like a documentary, lingering on the most interesting details and matter-of-factly hyping up the drama ... Farley’s book is truly a case of reality being stranger than fiction, a highly researched yet readable account of a shocking piece of U.S. history that doesn’t show up in textbooks.
