ROLL BACK THE WORLD

Kasdan recounts her older sister’s harrowing struggle with mental illness in this debut memoir.

When the author’s 19-year-old sister, Rachel, returned from a kibbutz in Israel, she radiated “beauty and sophistication.” Drawing on her newfound worldliness, she dazzled friends who stopped by the family home. Three years later, in 1965, Rachel was hearing “frightening voices” and was soon after diagnosed with schizophrenia. After multiple hospitalizations, Rachel died at the age of 59, 36 years after her first psychotic episode. Kasdan writes of her admiration for Rachel during their childhood and describes a family under pressure; moody and defiant, Rachel fought intensely with their parents. The author also conveys their trepidation about being members of a Jewish family with socialist values in the era when the Rosenbergs were executed for espionage. The memoir attempts to excavate the roots of mental illness and to come to terms with the guilt she felt for being unable to save a sibling. A long-term resident of St. Louis State Hospital, where the family felt she received insufficient care, Rachel was raped during her discharge to a boardinghouse. The family decided that she would receive better care on the West Coast, but the plan backfired, leaving Rachel isolated from her family. Drawing on her sister’s letters and poetry, the author attempts to “shine a light” on the “horror and wonder” of Rachel’s life, including “hospitalizations in open and locked wards,” “mind-numbing, tremor-causing medications,” “assaults in hospitals and on the streets,” and homelessness.

Kasdan’s writing is intelligent and probing. In trying to understand why one sibling develops a mental illness when another does not, she refers to the science of epigenetics: “High levels of stress during a child’s early years are believed to be a major factor in expression of rogue genes.” The author’s shrewd hypothesizing is carefully balanced with sororal tenderness, as when recalling her desperate plea to her sister: “Don’t leave me, Rachel. Don’t disappear into being crazy.” Kasdan’s inclusion of her sister’s poetry (which resembles the work of Sylvia Plath) offers an engaging first-person perspective on the stultifying nature of Rachel’s mental illness. In a poem entitled “Water,” Rachel writes, “I go down deep till bright waters / roll over and over / the sinking hulk of my body / covered by each wave one by one.” The memoir poignantly discusses how Rachel’s memory and poetry inspired the author to write as an act of catharsis. Kasdan’s description of how the act of writing now links the two sisters is profoundly moving: “When I sit down to write, I still hear the clatter of her typewriter ringing across the bedroom of our youth.” Although the narrative explores the unbearable pain of having a sibling with schizophrenia, it also recognizes how Rachel’s creativity was fueled by her illness and how that passion proved to be inspirational. The author delves deeply into memory and family dynamics to understand her sister’s diagnosis and, in doing so, finds self-forgiveness for being unable to save her.

Intricate and affecting, Kasdan’s debut finds hope in the saddest of stories.