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GIRLS AND THEIR MONSTERS

Name: GIRLS AND THEIR MONSTERS
Author: Audrey Clare Farley
ISBN: 9781538724477

THE GENAIN QUADRUPLETS AND THE MAKING OF MADNESS IN AMERICA

by Audrey Clare Farley ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2023

Haunting and impactful, this story does not leave the mind easily.

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A dark vault of pseudoscience, mental illness, and fame contained in a chronicle of four identical quadruplets in midcentury America.

In her latest book, following The Unfit Heiress, Farley chronicles the devastating lives of famous identical quadruplets born in 1930 to Carl and Sadie Morlok. The Morlok quadruplets performed on stage and off, maintaining the image of the perfect American family with matching outfits, dance routines, and plenty of publicity. Behind the doors of the Morlok home, however, the girls lived in a tumultuous, often brutal environment. By their mid-20s, all four were diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized. At the time, schizophrenia was one of psychology’s core puzzles, and the Morlok girls were the once-in-a-lifetime candidates for research. At the time, writes the author, “the estimated frequency of quadruplet births with at least one baby surviving is about one in a million….The chance of their all having schizophrenia is about one in one and a half billion. It’s hard to imagine they will ever again have such an opportunity for study.” 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. Readers will be upset at the horrifying events of the girls’ lives as well as America’s dark obsession with them as children. Throughout, the author does well to maintain concise readability while investigating the murky waters of midcentury psychology, pop culture, and eugenics. The archival narrative approach feels deeply personal with respect to the Morlok women, but the segments expanding on psychiatric philosophy and procedures may take readers out of the otherwise novelistic flow of the text. Nonetheless, 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.

Pub Date: June 13, 2023

ISBN: 9781538724477

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: March 20, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023

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THINK YOU'LL BE HAPPY

MOVING THROUGH GRIEF WITH GRIT, GRACE, AND GRATITUDE

by Nicole Avant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 17, 2023

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

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Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.

“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023

ISBN: 9780063304413

Page Count: 288

Publisher: HarperOne

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...

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A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.

The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.