Everything Is Fine

A “tender, emotional” memoir of a sibling’s mental illness, a shattering act of violence, and the complexities of grief (People).

Vince Granata remembers standing in front of his suburban home in Connecticut the day his mother and father returned from the hospital with his three new siblings in tow. He had just finished scrawling their names in red chalk on the driveway: Christopher, Timothy, and Elizabeth.

Twenty-three years later, Vince was a thousand miles away when he received the news that would change his life—Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia, had killed their mother in their childhood home. Devastated by the grief of losing his mother, Vince is also consumed by an act so incomprehensible that it overshadows every happy memory of life growing up in his seemingly idyllic middle-class family.

“Riveting . . . Granata writes with compassion, reflection and unsparing honesty.” —BookPage (starred review)

“In candid, smoothly unspooling prose, Granata reconstructs life and memory from grief, writing a moving testament to the therapy of art, the power of record, and his immutable love for his family.” —Booklist

“Although he writes of an unimaginable family tragedy, Vincent Granata’s Everything is Fine reads like a testament to life itself.” —Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises