The Biblio Blogazine

Apples and Oranges by Marie Brenner
ISBN13: 978-0312428808
Memoir, 265 pages
Picador

Book courtesy of Picador Book Club on Twitter

 Marie Brenner’s memoir of sibling rivalry asks a universal question: How can two people from the same family turn out so entirely different? In this story, Brenner investigates their contentious history and discovers how inspiring it can be to turn a brother into an ally. Honest, funny, and true, this is a moving story of sibling rivalry and redemption.

Non-fiction is a tricky genre for me. It is unfamiliar territory, yet I want to read more of it in order to understand it better. I also like to learn more about real people and their lives. Perhaps connecting in a way that might help me better understand mine.

Hence why I was drawn to this book.

Not to get too personal, but I too have had issues with my own sibling relationship and wonder if someday, somehow, it can ever be repaired. I cannot say if this book offers me hope in that regard, but it has offered comfort in knowing that what has happened in my life is not unique. Feeling alone in something can be the worst kind of torture. To know you are not alone helps.

One sentiment that struck me most was this:

The stage is set, soon enough we will live on opposite sides of the country. By then, we will have developed dossiers of grievances against each other.

How those words resonate with me.

In the end, I was left with these questions that I still ponder as I have no answer to them: Where is the line drawn that runs between the relationship that should be versus the one that will be? That no matter how we are raised, we end up being the individuals we are fated to be, and many times, that person cannot get along with or understand someone who is born from the same gene pool. Why does this happen? How can it be fixed?

As the author noted:

That we are not close seems a badge of shame, a personal failure, a more of my inabilities . . .

And it is this I struggle with each as to me, to be so estranged from family is some kind of shame – a failure. But as the author learns, there is no shame or failure in a sibling relationship gone awry.

In answer to an interview question about the competition inherent in sibling relationships, Brenner answers in a way that shows clearly, she and her brother did indeed come to terms regarding this aspect of their rivalry:

That was what the last years were about. We fought and fought, and then something happened. I went to visit him in his world. It was glorious. I’d never imagined how great it was and is. I worked with him in the orchards and learned about the apple. That caused him to relax – somewhat. Anyway, it gave us something new to talk about. I learned something huge: to try to see him as he was. And I realized I loved who he was – however maddening he could be. He might say a version of this, too. We were finally able to be a brother and sister, not two only children in the same family.

As memoirs go, this is one of the better ones I’ve read. I’m still unsure if I will grow to appreciate non-fiction as much as what I usually read, but if there are more on the shelves as good as this one, then it just may happen.

Marie Brenner is an author and Writer at Large for Vanity Fair.

She has published five books, including Great Dames: What I Learned from Older Women and the bestselling House of Dreams, The Bingham Family of Louisville.

She is the winner of six Front Page awards for her journalism and the Frank Luther Mott Kappa Tau Alpha Award for research.

Her expose of the tobacco industry, “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, was the basis for the 1999 movie “The Insider,” which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Her article “Erotomania” became the Lifetime movie “Obsessed.”