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.
Skillful ... Though often grim, Farley’s narrative is based in deep research and makes for her nuanced analysis of the country’s shifting attitudes toward childhood and mental health. Readers will be riveted.
Pulling no punches, Farley chronicles their story from birth to death, extracting the truth of their abuse by their father, the medical community, and the world. Not for the faint of heart, the book is a powerful but unsettling tale ... Farley tightly interweaves the quadruplets’ lives with the story of America’s fraught relationship with mental illness. Haunting and impactful, this story does not leave the mind easily.
