Non-fiction is a tricky genre for me. It is unfamiliar territory, yet I want to read more of it in order to understand it better. I also like to learn more about real people and their lives. Perhaps connecting in a way that might help me better understand mine.

Hence why I was drawn to this book.

Not to get too personal, but I too have had issues with my own sibling relationship and wonder if someday, somehow, it can ever be repaired. I cannot say if this book offers me hope in that regard, but it has offered comfort in knowing that what has happened in my life is not unique. Feeling alone in something can be the worst kind of torture. To know you are not alone helps.

One sentiment that struck me most was this: "The stage is set, soon enough we will live on opposite sides of the country. By then, we will have developed dossiers of grievances against each other."

How those words resonate with me.

In the end, I was left with these questions that I still ponder as I have no answer to them: Where is the line drawn that runs between the relationship that should be versus the one that will be? That no matter how we are raised, we end up being the individuals we are fated to be, and many times, that person cannot get along with or understand someone who is born from the same gene pool. Why does this happen? How can it be fixed?

As the author noted: "That we are not close seems a badge of shame, a personal failure, a more of my inabilities . . ."

And it is this I struggle with each as to me, to be so estranged from family is some kind of shame – a failure. But as the author learns, there is no shame or failure in a sibling relationship gone awry.

In answer to an interview question about the competition inherent in sibling relationships, Brenner answers in a way that shows clearly, she and her brother did indeed come to terms regarding this aspect of their rivalry:

That was what the last years were about. We fought and fought, and then something happened. I went to visit him in his world. It was glorious. I’d never imagined how great it was and is. I worked with him in the orchards and learned about the apple. That caused him to relax – somewhat. Anyway, it gave us something new to talk about. I learned something huge: to try to see him as he was. And I realized I loved who he was – however maddening he could be. He might say a version of this, too. We were finally able to be a brother and sister, not two only children in the same family.

As memoirs go, this is one of the better ones I’ve read. I’m still unsure if I will grow to appreciate non-fiction as much as what I usually read, but if there are more on the shelves as good as this one, then it just may happen ( )

Marie Brenner is, irrefutably, several things. She is a talented journalist, for sure. Her story on tobacco insider Jeffrey Wigand, "The Man Who Knew Too Much", inspired the 1999 movie "The Insider". She also is a woman who had a complicated relationship with her family, a family that includes a social activist and friend of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, a Presbyterian minister, a store owner and an apple farmer. She is a woman who lost a brother, recently, to cancer, a brother she was close to -- and anyone who has had a close sibling will understand without being told that close isn't always easy, isn't always without anger, love and hate all rolled into one relationship. Marie Brenner is a woman who wrote a book about all these things, and I honor her reasons for doing so. Ultimately I respected her, but I fear I was disappointed in this book.

Perhaps the subject matter is too close? The feelings too raw? Because my main criticism is about the writing itself, and I know, from her other work, that Brenner is a better writer than this. I found her style here, first off, to be highly confusing; her manner of speaking, of jumping topics too quickly. Of using italics to show someone is speaking, but only sometimes. It was chaotic. And the through-line of the book itself was problematic. Detours into family history in disjointed sections; new people (Marie's family, friends, colleagues) thrown into the mix without much explanation, so that I constantly found myself trying to keep track of who was who and wishing desperately that there had been a family tree chart included in the forward; an elliptical way of describing things that was frustrating, at best, to the reader. The section where she describes how her parents met, for example, was hopelessly enigmatic in a way that came off as too clever by far and not comprehensible enough. Far too often I was forced to spend too much time figuring out what she was saying, leaving me with not enough focus or interest left to figure out why she was saying it.

A memoirist must, by definition, write about his or her own life, and obviously doing so involves the entanglement of emotions. That's to be expected. The story Brenner has to tell -- of her family, of her brother, and also of the two of them, as siblings, and the ebb and flow and sum total of their relationship -- I think it is a story worth telling. But while in the end, I definitely understood what Brenner wanted to get from writing this book, what she wanted to accomplish, personally, by doing so, I am not so sure what she wanted me, as the reader, to get from it. ( )

For such an accomplished journalist, she seemed oddly needy with a very difficult personality. Her ADD would have driven me as crazy as it did her brother. And this manifested in the structure of the book, which was all over the place, from her Mexican ancestors (who I didn't have the slightest interest in) to apple growing (likewise). The parts about her brother were the most interesting. ( )

I was disappointed. When Brenner stuck to her relationship with her brother Carl, I enjoyed the book. Carl is a fascinating character and Brenner is better at fleshing him out than she is about herself. I found the amount of time devoted to the family history distracting. ( )

Sad and rambling memoir with very little to recommend it. The author couldn't walk a straight line ... especially when there was something glittery along the way to grab her attention. It's possible readers who like non-linear writing may find it to their liking. ( )