Customer Reviews

Halfway Heaven

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I attended Harvard, and was in the class of '96. I did not know Sinedu or Trang, so I cannot speak for the accuracy (or lack) in Ms Thernstrom's depiction of them. However, she is dead-on in her description of Harvard's attitude towards mental health problems and treatment. I disagree with the comments implying she had an axe to grind with Harvard; she states in the book that her own experience had been much more positive, and she said very few things I considered to be unfair or vindictive. I didn't agree with everything she says in the book, and I agree that she includes some details which are extraneous, but on the whole I was extremely surprised at the book's quality. I read it only recently, and very reluctantly, expecting it to be as exploitative as most other "true crime" books, but it is not. I will recommend this book to others, not least because of the accuracy of her description of Harvard.

I worked at Harvard for many years and knew a number of the people Thernstrom interviewed. Her take on the institution is stunningly accurate. The book is extremely well conceived and executed. The insight that this book offers into Sinedu's incredible loneliness (not even this word properly describes her life experience) is haunting. The chapter describing the author's visit to Ethiopia and the culture differences she discovers between Ethiopian life and American life is stunning. Read it!

This is a journalist's account of a tragic murder/suicide at Harvard in 1995. The story is a fascinating insight into four contrasting cultures - the ex-patriot Vietnamese society of Trang Phuong Ho, the victim, the austere Ethopian culture of the perpetrator, Sinedu Tadesse, our own privileged and frequently xenophobic country and the rarefied and elitist world of higher education. Trang's death is obviously maddeningly senseless and deprives us all of a talented and admirable young woman. Nevertheless, I found Sinedu's story equally agonizing. Her overwhelming loneliness and alienation are wrenching to read. On the one hand, you desperately wish that someone would reach out to her. On the other, you can appreciate how offputtingly needy she was and sympathize with Trang's decision to break away from Sinedu'e smothering affection. Thernstrom does a particularly good job of investigating Sinedu's heritage, and the picture is unbearably pathetic.

The book does have its flaws. Thernstrom inserts herself far too much into the story. Her own experiences at Harvard were more distracting than helpful in setting in the context, and frankly seemed unnecessarily self-indulgent. It left me with a niggling sense that Thernstom was capitalizing on the tragedy rather than objectively reporting it. Similarly, I thought she made way too much of the fact that the administration wasn't anxious to cooperate with her story. Aside from the obvious liability issues, it seems clear that Thernstrom made it obvious that she was looking to point fingers. I personally thought she was overreaching in suggesting that this was a tragedy that should have been avoided. While colleges could no doubt do a better job of tending the psychiatric health of their students, this was in many ways an unusual confluence of events that doesn't accurately reflect typical scenarios that colleges should be anticipating. These quibbles aside, however, the book is a solid piece of journalism and a fascinating read.

Melanie Thernstrom, does a good job of conveying a sense of the environments from which the killer, Sinedu, and victim, Trang, came, to some extent their personalities, and the contradictions about how their personalities were perceived. She makes this all interesting and she doesn't drag on too long. She also does a good job at making the build-up to the event both suspenseful and tragic.

At a point, through, the book becomes sour grapes. It isn't clear the author's vendetta against Harvard has been brewing since she was a student or if it developed since encountering difficulty in researching the story. She names names of administrators and even clerks who gave her a hard time investigating the story. She particularly bores down on a House Master, who she portrays as a dishonest jerk, but doesn't really explain how he's responsible for the deaths. By comparison, there is just the implication that Sinedu's parents, who seemed oblivious to her personality and uninterested in her as a person, may have been neglectful.

Thernstrom concludes, "Sinedu was possessed by spirits or psychosis; Trang was perfected and ready to enter into the Pure Land; Harvard didn't foresee and couldn't prevent anything." Dissecting this reveals the flaw in her approach:

· Thernstrom considers the possibility that Sinedu was actually possessed through respectful quotes from Ethiopians and Vietnamese. The author does not attempt a spiritual analysis, as she does a psychological analysis, but neither does she dismiss the possibility. I don't find fault in this. One of the Ethiopians speculates that she could have been better cared for because there is somebody to deal with evil spirits there, but not in the U.S. If this tragedy happened in Ethiopia and someone wrote a book, it is doubtful that it would have had anything at all to do with Harvard, yet the nexus is the same: a very sick girl living in a society ill equipped to identify and deal with her. Thernstrom does acknowledge, again through another's quote, "the pattern of undertreatment in student health services as `a reflection of the age-old problem that the culture of mental health is not treated like other sicknesses.'" But the larger cultural problem with attitudes about mental illness is given short-shrift next to Harvard's particular problems. The author offers several examples of deans and administrators giving her a hard time for writing the story. But she neither makes a compelling cause and effect case, nor does she adequately outline a realistic course that could have prevented the tragedy.

· She does discuss an unrelated case of two brothers with "bi-polar" disorder, one of whom is "undertreated" at Harvard, while the other is treated well at MIT. She other Harvard horror stories in an attempt to develop a pattern of psychological neglect. This pattern, of course, presupposes that Sinedu's illness was mental, not spiritual (a similar tale of neglect could be written from the perspective of a religious person who complains about Harvard's inadequate religious resources). This technique is unfair. MIT has its own student deaths. The famous cases have to do with Fraternities, hazing, and alcohol. MIT should not be used as an example of excellent care and attention for students. Thernstrom offers some Johns Hopkins horror stories to suggest that the problem is not exclusive to Harvard. Her choice of examples, however, betrays a certain elitism that even accepts that there is such a thing as "undertreatment." The word suggests that students should expect some sort of treatment, but treatment isn't much of an option in the vast majority of human institutions. I wonder if community college students who are mentally ill get adequately identified and treated? What about high school students? What about Burger King managers? In what sphere of life do most people receive mental health services - or even physical health services - that are adequate? When 43 million Americans have no health insurance at all, why is it especially shameful that Harvard was unable to identify and adequately treat an abnormally ill woman from a foreign culture with minimal representation on campus?

· Sinedu was, actually, receiving treatment. She was seeing a therapist who the author describes as incompetent and inadequately trained. This begs the question, what if all the "negligent" advisors did recognize Sinedu's problems - what would they have done? They would have referred her to a therapist, like the one she was actually seeing. Either that, or they would have tried to deal with her themselves. But that type of activity is criticized by the author in another case because the advisor was not a mental health professional. So what would be different? The actually attempts to psychoanalyze the dead Sinedu herself. If Sinedu's therapist was inadequately trained to diagnose the living Sinedu, what gives this author qualifications to cut through the clouds and divine a dead person's psychosis? The author's defense is twofold: (1) she refers to "many psychologists" to whom she talked about the case; and (2) she offers her analysis as a possibility, not a definitive statement. But to the first point, it is she who culls from the mostly unidentified psychologists a diagnosis that appears in the book. Moreover, their failures are not discussed as the Harvard administrators' are. To the latter point, acknowledging that a specific mental illness is only a possibility, and then offering up possession as the only alternative, leaves readers with the impression that the psychoanalysis that appears in the pages is the truth.

· Finally, the least objectionable pillar of the book was its treatment of the victim, Trang, as "perfected and ready to enter into the Pure Land." There's no reason she shouldn't be. It would be in very poor taste to stress or even touch on this person's flaws, whatever they may have been. That said, Trang's saintly depiction is used, not to contrast the demonic Sinedu, but rather, the hideous Harvard. Harvard looks worse next to Trang, and in that sense, I think she is being exploited to make a point.

I simply cannot understand some of these reviews. Were they not reading the same book? This book is in no way exploitive or can be considered a sleaze fest. The author is an intelligent and gifted writer. Halfway Heaven is not a typical true crime narrative. Melanie Thernstrom was able to delve deep inside the psychosis of Sinedu Tadesse through her diaries and those who knew her. The author did not portray Ms Sinedu as a woman possessed of evil spirits or a cold blooded murderer. This is, by all accounts, a gripping documentary. Ms Tadesse was a young woman who struggled desperately to hang onto what little sanity she had left. She failed and in a final grip of depression killed the girl she felt betrayed her and then committed suicide. Her roommate Trang was portrayed as a friendly, outgoing, intelligent girl. Ms Thernstrom, did not in any way exploit the families of these two women for money or a "story."

I would consider this book more a study on loneliness, jealousy, alienation and deep clinical depression then murder or betrayal. The effect the murder/suicide had on the families of both Sinedu & Trang was thoughtfully investigated and reported. I highly recommend this book for it's insightful and excellent writing.

I finished this book in two days. I did not think the author was exploiting her subject matter; as an investigative writer she has to use all the resources that are available to her, including diaries, personal interviews, news reports, etc. I commend her on the thoroughness of her research. When something like this occurs a normal person naturally wants to make sense of it, at least to look for a reason why it happened. It was very obvious that the Ethiopian girl was emotionally disturbed and her cries for help were casually ignored. How can this happen, especially at such a prestigious school as Harvard? I hope this book will be a catalyst for change at all college campuses where mental health of the study body is concerned.

I think the other customer reviewers are being very unfair to the author. Ms. Thernstrom very effectively conveys the nature of clinical despression and its consequences if left untreated. Her perhaps overzealous desire to tell this story results from the importance of its message.

I also thought that the author was very fair in her treatment of Harvard. It's true that the University is only one of thousands, but it considers itself the epitome of what an educational institution should be, and so should be held strictly accountable for its failings.

In this case, Harvard utterly failed to come to the help of a young woman who clearly suffered from a serious illness. Harvard's indifference directly led to the deaths of two very promising young students. Moreover, it's behavior after the crime was almost reprehensible.

Ms. Thernstom does a great service in exposing the University's failings and, more generally, the inability of college administrators to confront the extreme problem of depression among its students.

A gripping tale of the widely reported murder-suicide, mostly thanks to the killer's diary and interviews with the victim's family. But it is the same thing that makes me ill: Thernstrom talks about how much the whole thing troubles her, including an incident she had with the killer while teaching a course at Harvard. But she apparently isn't troubled by using the diaries and the victim's family to make a lot of money. Maybe this is true of all true crime books, but Thernstrom seems to have taken such crassness one step beyond - marketing the most personal sufferings and her own hand-wringing.

Good writing, but lacks focus and well defined purpose. Writer is reduced to quoting random student gripes about counseling center; and writer has an uncritical acceptance of psychology and drug therapy. Seroius issues are raised, but not developed in detail; there seems to be no unifing theme or set of values.General animus against Harvard is expressed in criticisms which assume Harvard is primarily a hospital. Critique of public relations mentality at Harvard is effective, but author seems to be stretching New Yorker essay into pretty thin book. An enjoyable book with troubling limitations

Review by Rosie Meysenburg

This story of a Harvard murder-suicide that happened in 1995 involved a young woman from Ethiopia, Sinedu Tadesse, who stabbed her Vietnamese roomate 45 times and then killed herself.

For three years Sinedu saw a psychologist at Harvard. Is it possible to have therapy with a psychologist for 3 years and not be sent to an M.D. for antidepressant treatment?

There is the possibility that Sinedu was in antidepressant withdrawal during the murder-suicide. The main clue to this event is the chapter where Sinedu meets and has lunch with her friend from Ethiopia who is also a Harvard student. He comments on the change in Sinedu's appearance. Contrary to her usual appearance, she had dressed herself beautifully and had a glow to her face that the friend had never seen previously. She was chatty and lively. These are all signs of a manic type reaction [to an antidepressant??}. If this is what was happening to Sinedu, then she was still on the antidepressant when she met with her friend.

If and when Sinedu quit taking the antidepressant, her previous depression would have worsened as would her manic symptoms. There is also the possibility that she was still on the antidepressant and the college police turned all evidence of medicine bottles over to those in authority.

It is a well known fact that some of the more infamous murder/suicides in recent years involved antidepressants. Kip Kinkle, Springfield, Oregon, who killed his parents and several class mates at his high school, was in Prozac withdrawal. Eric Harris was on Luvox, a Prozac type antidepressant, when he went on his rampage at Columbine High School. Jeff Weise was on Prozac when he killed ten people, including himself, and wounded seven at Red Lake, MN high school.

The fact that Sinedu wrote to people she found in the phone book is another clue to her antidepressant use. People who report going manic on their antidepressant often mention writing long letters to perfect strangers.

This book is excellent reading for trying to come to grips with what is happening in our country regarding antidepressants and murder-suicides.