SOURCE: "Dark Angels," in Chicago Tribune Books, April 27, 1997, p. 3.

[Below, Alessio reviews three memoirs examining the effects of mental illness on families: Tara Elgin Holley's My Mother's Keeper, Clea Simon's Mad House, and Jay Neugeboren's Imagining Robert.]

The modern world recklessly equates mental illness with art. Consider the current world tour of Australian pianist David Helfgott, the subject of the popular film Shine. Despite reports of his abysmal technique, Helfgott plays to sold-out audiences, while his CD ranks as a best seller on classical music charts. Famous disturbed artists whose work did succeed, like Vincent Van Gogh and Robert Lowell, nurture the illusion that the insane are intermediaries from a mysterious aesthetic realm. As if the mentally ill did not have enough to contend with, recent books such as Arnold Ludwig's The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy saddle their condition with the expectation of...