[.ca] Genie: A Scientific Tragedy (ISBN 0060924659)

Very tragic:
This is a must read for anyone interested in linguistics or child development; however, it is sufficiently interesting and readable for the general population. The tragedy the title refers to is that Genie was a child exploited by the scientific world as she was treated as a case study of language acquisition rather than an abused child desperately in need of supportive therapy. Genie never got the help she needed, and ended up with "soul sickness" in a home for mentally retarded adults. This is a very moving story that will make you think about morality in research and science.

A Modern Tragedy:
I have worked as an American Sign Language interpreter, and I am also a qualified behavior specialist. I currently work with autistic teenagers in developing community living skills. I have also worked with adults who have grown up in institutions, and have an array of "institutionalized" behaviors. Thus they have become severely impaired in their daily function, when they might have been habilitated to live independently. No matter how many times I see these situations, each one breaks my heart. So I have more than a passing interest in the subject of this book. That parents could strap a child to a chair and provide her no social interaction for thirteen years, with no one knowing boggles the mind. The whole family is a tragedy. Russ Rymer documents Genie's habilitation after she is discovered, and freed from this captivity. She is more than a tragedy to some people, because she is also a scientific curiosity; she presents an opportunity to study a person who, deprived of social contact past the "critical point" in language development, never develops language skills beyond the semantic level. Everyone wants a piece of her. Linguists want her, social psychologists want her, developmental psychologists want her; each with a different agenda. As for Genie, it is difficult to fathom what she wants. In the immediate present, she has remarkable non-linguistic communicative skills which she seems to possess intuitively. But what are her hopes, her desires for a permanent living arrangement, an education, she can't communicate, or even correctly understand. It's no good to assume that she would want what a normal child wants. She doesn't respond to affection, doesn't appear to discriminate between people and objects at first. The story is heart-breaking and fascinating. Rymer's narrative voice is kind and full of compassion for Genie, and although the book is written in a typical third person academic style, sometimes I felt that the narrator was the only one on Genie's side. When Rymer senses that readers may need background information, he departs from the story for an aside on linguistic theory, or the story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron. He dips into Montaigne, Locke, Descartes and Chomsky, but it is all relevant as Rymer reports it. We get the dirt on the nasty in-fighting among custodians and scientists as well. I hesitate to say you will enjoy this book, because the subject is so wrenching; you may cry a few times. But it is a page turner. And you don't need to know anything about linguistics or developmental psychology to appreciate it.

The "Afterword" knocked my socks off:
Gee, I wish I could write a book this good, and I wish all books written were this good. The "afterword" is not to be missed -- Mr. Rymer describes his process of writing the book, and how he, the scientists he interviewed, and most everyone who tried to "understand" Genie, all ended up understanding themselves in some humbling or transformative way. So did I.

GENIE: A VERY PERSONAL RECOLLECTION:
Mr. Rymer's excellent book brought back an old and very painful memory for me. I am all-too familiar with Genie's tragic story. In 1970, I lived in California where it all took place. I was seventeen at the time, passing through my "hippie" phase much to the chagrin of my long-suffering parents.... We all happened to be watching TV one evening in early November of that year when a somber looking Walter Cronkite reported the tragic particulars of the a terribly abused thirteen year old. We were all shocked and completely emotionally overwhelmed by it.I've NEVER forgotten it. Many years later, I had moved back to my native East coast, finished college and became a free-lance writer. Then in 1994, PBS debuted its emmy award-winning documentary about this subject. It really took me by surprise. At that point, I hadn't thought of Genie for many years, but this heartwrenching expose brought it all back. All I could do is weep....and I'm NOT ashamed to admit that. I resolved, then and there to write something, ANYTHING to HONOR this poor girl (now in her forties, like myself). I am now six years into writing an elegiac work about her life. But its NOT easy . People directly involved with Genie'story have not really wanted to talk about it even though they are heroes to me. On this point, I take strong issue with Mr. Rymer when he seems to imply that these people exploited Genie. They really did the best they could to save her....although it was all in vain. Although I've never met Genie, she nevertheless is very very close to my heart. I will always remember her, and I hope, that her present life, such as it is, has at least some happiness and peace. No one deserves this more.......

Brilliant:
I don't have a lot to say that the other reviews haven't addressed, so I'll keep it short. This is a book about such lofty subjects as neurolinguistics and scientific ethics, yet it remains wonderfully readable to the average (but curious) person. It's a fascinating story (see the other reviews), but Rymer's real achievement here is rendering what could have been dry scientific data interspersed with horrific tales of abuse into a book that at no time exploits its subject for cheap sentimentality. We care about "Genie" because her shot at normal life was twice aborted, not because Rymer simply wants us to. Recommended to any curious mind.