Blue Genes: A Memoir of Loss and Survival [Hardcover]

Christopher Lukas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2008

Tony and I are brothers across the stroboscopic echoes of the past: dissolving across black interludes into the next image, and the next, and the next, until all vestige of pure vision is destroyed. All that is left is memory, and we know how faulty that can be. Who Tony was is forever blurred by who I was and how I remember who I thought Tony was . . . He is dead, and I am alive—left to dwell on questions, and to seek the answers . . .
Would I, too, end up killing myself? Was the legacy of self-destruction I would discover in my family too great for me to survive? If so, when would the pendulum swing? And, if it never did, why not? How could I—almost alone among my family—escape?
—From Blue Genes

This courageous, engrossing memoir explores the complex and shattering effects of a family legacy of depression and suicide on the author and his brother, the award-winning journalist, J. Anthony Lukas.

Christopher (Kit) Lukas’s mother committed suicide when he was a boy. He and his brother, Tony, were not told how she died. No one spoke of the family’s history of depression and bipolar disorder. The legacy of guilt and grief haunted Kit and Tony throughout their lives.
Both brothers achieved remarkable success, Tony as a gifted journalist, Kit as an accomplished television producer and director. After suffering bouts of depression, Kit was able to confront his family’s troubled past, drawing on his experience to write Silent Grief, an invaluable guide to surviving a loved one’s suicide. Tony forged a sterling career, eventually winning two Pulitzer Prizes, including one for the now-classic book Common Ground. But he never seemed to find the contentment Kit had attained; he remained creative, but depressed. In 1997, shortly before the publication of his acclaimed book, Big Trouble, Tony Lukas committed suicide.
Blue Genes portrays the lives of two brothers who alternately locked horns and found solace in each other. Written with heartrending candor, it captures the devastation of this family legacy of depression, but it is also surprisingly uplifting, as it details the strength and hope that can provide a way of escaping its grasp.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a supremely brave effort literally to save his own life, Lukas shatters the silence surrounding the long history of suicide in his Hungarian-German-Jewish family, especially that of his older brother, J. Anthony Lukas (Tony). Depression and what is now diagnosed as bipolar disorder hounded various family members, most notably the brothers' beautiful college-educated actress mother, Elizabeth, whose deepening depression, exacerbated no doubt by the sense of guilt and inadequacy in her marriage, led her to cut her own throat in 1941, when the boys were just six and eight. Lukas writes with the reassuring sagacity of hindsight, knowing the negative long-term effects of his mother's mental illness on his brother especially, but at the time her death was mysterious and devastating, and the brothers' relationship grew mutually needy and protective, on the one hand, and fractious and competitive, on the other. Feelings of betrayal, guilt and rage erupted at points during the successful careers for both brothers—Tony as a driven journalist with the New York Times and author (Common Ground) who won two Pulitzer prizes; and Christopher (Kit), an Emmy Award–winning TV producer, author and actor. For Tony, however, who married late, remained childless and took antidepressants, his illness was debilitating, leading him to suicide in 1997. In clear, forceful prose, the author attempts to make sense of these calamities and assert a life-affirming purpose. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Christopher and Tony Lukas's mother committed suicide when they were very young, but the boys were never told how she died—silence was the family's policy on its legacy of mental illness. Regardless, both brothers achieved great success in their fields (the author is a TV producer and director), and their bond was loving but fraught. Sadly, Tony, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his journalism, committed suicide in 1997. Those interested in how mental illness afflicts generations and how to find strength and hope in the face of it will find this remarkably honest memoir resonant. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/08.]—Elizabeth Brinkley
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (September 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385525206
• ISBN-13: 978-0385525206
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,339,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Honest and Moving, September 22, 2008

By 

Johanna C. Wood - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blue Genes: A Memoir of Loss and Survival (Hardcover)

This is a moving account of Mr. Lukas' family experiences with depression. What is most interesting is that he is coming out of a generation where treatment for mental illness was primitive and not very effective. His losses because of that tragic fact are at times overwhelming. When I reached the end of the book I felt that it was a miracle that Mr. Lukas was still alive considering the history he has lived through! I wanted to say to him, "You are extraordinary and accepted and valued exactly for who you are!" His examination has a flavor of psychoanalysis - how have events played themselves out in relationship to his earliest experiences as a boy. Overall, a moving picture of one man's attempt to understand his family relationships.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A realistic portrayal of a family living with suicide, April 25, 2009

By 

Emily O "Voracious Reader" (East Hills, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blue Genes: A Memoir of Loss and Survival (Hardcover)

Being a survivor in a family where multiple members committed suicide, I could relate to exactly what this brave author, Christopher Lukas, details in his memoir, Blue Genes. And I, like Christopher Lukas, was mislead initially as to the cause of and history behind my parent's suicide, forcing me to grieve over the loss twice - once after it first occurred, and later in life when I finally learned that the death was a chosen, intentional one. Lukas brilliantly describes the anger, the guilt and the sadness behind such a loss.... the feeling of utter abandonment and loneliness that survivors of suicide must face. I especially liked the parallels he drew between the way he dealt with the loss, versus the way his brother dealt with it.

While the emotions that ruled Blue Genes were utterly real and raw, I felt that the story was told by Lukas in an overly-factual manner. Robotic even. At times I felt as if I were trudging through this memoir. For a much more spell-binding read, try Loss and Found by Karen Flyer. This memoir, also about the after-effects of the suicide of a parent, and the ramifications on a young child's emotional, psychological and physical development, reads much more like a novel - like a story that propels you forward versus dragging you along.

Both of these books are must-reads for anyone who has been forced to live on in the wake of a suicide. Raw, emotional and real.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An American Tragedy, September 19, 2008

By 

L. Lynette Mejia (Lafayette, LA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blue Genes: A Memoir of Loss and Survival (Hardcover)

The story of Christopher Lukas and his brother, award-winning journalist J. Anthony Lukas, is a chronicle of mental health medicine's evolution in the 20th century. Their family is struck again and again by bipolar disorder, a disease not yet understood or properly treated until late in the century. Unfortunately, the repercussions from misdiagnosis and lack of proper treatment echo through the lives of these brothers with shattering immediacy, starting with the suicide of their mother when the boys were only eight and six years old. Through the years one after another family member succumbs to the disease, ending finally with the suicide of Tony, the story that begins the memoir. The tragedy is in the sheer magnitude of the toll it takes on the family, but Mr. Lukas tells it not only as a memorial to what the he and his brother went through, but as a testament to the fact that, despite it all, he survived.

After relating the account of his family's origins beginning with his great-grandparents, Lukas chronicles the heartbreaking story of his mother's death, and how the boys were immediately shipped off to boarding school with no explanation for their mother's disappearance or chance to say good-bye. This forced delay of grieving was to influence and haunt both men throughout their lives, an added burden to their already confusing personal battles with depression and bipolar disorder. Sadly, in the end it proved a burden too heavy for Tony.

While interesting and thoroughly well-written, this book is a difficult read, mainly due to the pervasive sadness that permeates this family's history. Mr. Lukas does an excellent job of conveying the struggle the boys underwent throughout their lives, but he pays scant attention to the good moments he has enjoyed through the years, flying by his wife and daughter's impact on his health and well-being. Ultimately, Lukas triumphs in the story, but his victory seems almost Pyrrhic - a survivor alone, among the ashes.