PRAISE OF SUICIDE SURVIVOR'S MEMOIR "BLUE GENES" IS PERSUASIVE

Reading Roy Blount Jr.'s 2008 New York Times book review of Christopher Lukas's Blue Genes instantly persuaded me to buy the book. Blount, while criticizing its perhaps too-clever title, writes,

I can in all candor recommend "Blue Genes" ... on its merits.

Lukas, author of the classic Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide is a survivor of his mother's suicide when he was seven years old and, more than 50 years later, of his brother's suicide. Blount reflects on the question commonly asked by the suicide bereaved -- "Why?" -- and defers to Lukas, who, in Blue Genes

"... doesn't provide 'the answer' that people want to hear."

In the end, Blount writes appreciatively, the author of Blue Genes "has held on to life, and to the story of a lifetime," and the reviewer's praise for this "oddly jointed and frequently goofy" memoir makes me want to read the answer Lukas does provide to the perennial "why question," which indeed is what we survivors call it.