Customer Reviews

Moonrise: One Family, Genetic Identity, and Muscular Dystrophy

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book starts out more like a mystery or spy novel than the memoir it is. We are first introduced to the author, her husband and baby in a poetic first chapter. Next we are introduced to the "villain" (which turns out to be the genetic disease muscular dystrophy) only later to find out that it is not only slowly killing her beautiful child Ansel, but is also hiding inside her newly pregnant sister! We are then led through various vignettes where she describes her son's diagnosis, various treatments, and his transformation from an unusually attractive baby into a disabled child. Wolfson also describes her quest to understand the genetics of this disease where she not only gains insight into its biochemistry but also into the complicated history and dynamics of her own family. As the book concludes we find yet another transformation of Ansel from a troublesome disabled child to a quirky, intellectually gifted teenager. When I got to the end of the book I wanted another chapter to tell me what happens next to this remarkable mother and son. I was left feeling very moved, not with pity but with admiration. Talk about turning a bunch of lemons into lemonade! Anyone with chronic disease lurking in their family (and who doesn't) has got to read this book.

Moonrise is a powerful book, beautifully written, full of forceful oppositions-health and disability, despair and joy, science and poetry. Were it a writer's imagined construct, it might be considered too calculated, too balanced between the life forces we control and those that control us. However, Moonrise is not a novel, rather a book that recalls the truism that life can be stranger than fiction. Penny Wolfson has written from the depths of her own experience a perfect parable, an inspiring story of the life of her son Ansel, rich in humor, strikingly full of unnerving Dantean imagery, and imbued with tremendous pathos. Though ostensibly concerned with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, Moonrise is actually a story about the condition of life and its inherent struggles, speaks to anyone who ponders the eternal mysteries of why we live and how we live. In addition to describing the sobering details of genetic determinism and the wrenching realities of watching a child's body degenerate, Wolfson analyses and celebrates family and all its myriad complexities.

let me let you know, take me seriously with the stars, I really love the book. Penny sounds like someone very kind to everyone and everything, she treats everyone the right way. I still think you won't take me seriously, but you're probably right ignoring me.

My nephew has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, so I approached my reading of this book with some experience of the disease.
I have to say that I was a little turned off by the mother, who I found cold, insensitive and self-absorbed. The book always seemed
to focus more on her and how her son's illness inconvenienced her and screwed up her life. I would have liked to read more about
the boy. Although his struggles were portrayed, the focus of the story always seemed to shift back to the mother. I am not saying
I would have liked a treacly, maudlin, overly sentimental rendition of Ansel's plight, but I found the mother's "voice" strangely
chilly. I also could have done without all the medical stuff which got way too detailed and numbed me.
All in all, what should have been a moving account didn't reach me at all.

This book should appeal to readers who value the hard, loving truth-telling ability of the author, the mother of Ansel, a child with muscular dystrophy. I first read her essay of the same name in Best American Essays, and the book delivered a more edgy, tough potrait of the family. Admirable, credible, and hopeful, the mother is one tough customer, and so is her son. That is the key to surviving and thriving despite the woes of this debilitating, chronic illness. Ansel and his mom (and dad, and siblings) are a real family, in the best sense of the word.

...I was curious and did read it. And I am very glad that I did. You are a very strong person and have been both a great mother and great friend for Ansel. I was touched and moved by how honestly you expressed your ongoing thoughts and feelings towards the disease and the struggle to deal with it as a mother, a wife and a friend. Indeed it is sad that Ansel or anyone for that matter has to suffer such an illness in life, but not everyone is as lucky to have a mother as strong, defiant and loyal as you, who has such a powerful means of expressing herself through writing. Your whole family must be very proud of you, especially Ansel. I am also impressed by your observations and descriptions of Ansel and how brave and strong he has been all of his life....Ansel is an optimistic skeptic, and brave at that (his will not to give up, I noticed, was something he inherited from you). Many of us, including myself, can learn from someone like him. And in the words of Ansel, "everything happens for a reason."