His white Hanes T-shirt is sticking to his back beneath his vest, pissing him off. The windows are open, but that doesn’t help a lick. The air in the house is a thick swamp, today’s heat and humidity already elbowing in on what was trapped inside yesterday. It’s been sweltering for June, in the high eighties all week, and barely cools down at night. Plus it’s a thousand degrees hotter than hell in here. It’s so hard to think lately when he’s in a hurry.

He’s going to be late for roll call if he doesn’t get the hell out of here pronto, but he can’t go anywhere without his gun. He can’t kick off his boots in the living room or set his sunglasses down on the coffee table without her relocating them to “where they belong.” Who made her God in this house? If he wants to leave a stinking pile of his own shit right in the middle of the kitchen table, then that’s where it should stay until he moves it.

'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.ĭamn woman is always moving his things. Praised for writing that 'explores the resilience of the human spirit' (The San Francisco Chronicle), Lisa Genova has once again delivered a novel as powerful and unforgettable as the human insights at its core. As Joe's symptoms worsen and he's eventually stripped of his badge and more, Joe struggles to maintain hope and a sense of purpose, while Katie and her siblings must find the courage to either live a life 'at risk' or learn their fate. While watching her potential future in her father's escalating symptoms, twenty-one-year-old daughter Katie struggles with the questions this test imposes on her young adult life. Huntington's is a lethal neurodegenerative disease with no treatment and no cure, and each of Joe's four children has a 50 percent chance of inheriting their father's disease. He initially attributes these episodes to the stress of his job, but as these symptoms worsen, he agrees to see a neurologist and is handed a diagnosis that will change his and his family's lives forever: Huntington's disease. A devoted husband, proud father of four children in their twenties, and respected officer, Joe begins experiencing bouts of disorganized thinking, uncharacteristic temper outbursts, and strange, involuntary movements. Joe O'Brien is a forty-three-year-old police officer from the Irish Catholic neighborhood of Charlestown, Massachusetts. From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Lisa Genova comes a 'heartbreaking.very human novel' (Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves) that does for Huntington's disease what her debut novel Still Alice did for Alzheimer's.

Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova