More Than it Hurts You

by Darin Strauss

The acclaimed author of Chang and Eng returns with a literary showstopper— a beautifully realized novel that at its heart is the story of a woman who will risk everything to feel something; a doctor whose diagnosis brings her entire life into question; and a man who suddenly realizes that being a good husband and a good father can no longer comfortably coexist.

Josh Goldin was savoring a Friday afternoon break in the coffee room, harmlessly flirting with coworkers while anticipating the weekend at home where his wife, Dori, waited with their eight-month-old son, Zack. And then Josh’s secretary rushed in, using words like intensive care, lost consciousness, blood. . . .

That morning, Dori had walked into the emergency room with her son in severe distress. Enter Dr. Darlene Stokes: an African-American physician and single mother whose life is dedicated both to her own son and navigating the tricky maze of modern-day medicine. But something about Dori stirred the doctor’s suspicions. Darlene had heard of the sensational diagnosis of Munchausen by Proxy, where a mother intentionally harms her baby, but had never come upon a case of it before. It was rarely diagnosed and extraordinarily controversial. Could it possibly have happened here?

As their four lives intersect with dramatic consequences, Darlene, Dori, and Josh are pushed to their breaking points as they confront the nightmare that has become their new reality. Darin Strauss’s extraordinary novel is set in a world turned upside down—where doctors try to save babies from their parents, police use the law to tear families apart, and the people you know the best end up surprising you the most.

Genres: Fiction, Psychology, Book Club, Audiobook, Medical, Adult Fiction, Literary Fiction

416 pages, Hardcover

First published June 17, 2008

About the author

A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and a winner of the American Library Association's Alix Award and The National Book Critics Circle Award, the internationally-bestselling writer Darin Strauss is the author of the novels Chang & Eng, The Real McCoy, and More Than It Hurts You, and the NBCC-winning memoir Half a Life. These have been New York Times Notable Books, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Amazon, Chicago Tribune, and NPR Best Books of the Year, among others. Darin has been translated into fourteen languages and published in nineteen countries, and he is a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU's creative writing program.

Reviews

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

A comment below hints at some of my concerns as I got underway, and the book never really broke from its initial, out-of-the-gate stride. A fast read, and casually engaging, but its ambitious ingredients (the sweep of a social-issues canvas, the page-turner, the incisive character satire) never synthesized into a satisfying meal.

Besides its indebtedness to Franzen and Wolfe, there were explicit head-nods to Amis and to Bellow, hints of Atwood at her sliest and sharpest. All great people to steal from, to emulate, but this felt more like karaoke (or maybe, at best, a good cover band) of such stuff.

I could probably waste more of your time trying to diagnose the novel's weaknesses or defending my relative disengagement, but... this is another book (like Wroblewski's recent, much-loved Edgar Sawtelle ) that I think just wasn't my cup of joe. Taken as a dark-comic melodrama, it's probably a pretty fine read, and my "recommended to" tag-line was meant sincerely, not dismissively. But I came in expecting something more psychologically and socially incisive, and with a lot more top-spin in the prose.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an absorbing psychological study of what people do to motivate themselves and others as well as what secrets and lies they tell themselves to do so. At one point a main character asks himself "How much blindness does a happy life require?" On the surface, this is a story about a family dealing with allegations of Munchausen by Proxy (where a parent makes a child ill or hurts it to get the attention for themselves). But that is only one layer of the deep and varied textures of this story. Fidelity, racism, abandonment, love, hate, and status all come into play throughout the book, with a constant strong current of redemption at any cost running under it all.

[Ashleigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's hard to concisely discuss how many different things I disliked about this book. Simply put, it aims high, but Darin Strauss is not good enough as an author to have successfully written this. For the book to have had two editors (allegedly), so many things (both narratively and straight-up typos) went unchecked.

It's clear that the author does not know how to do effective worldbuilding nor build depth of character. He constantly introduces extraneous characters and details that distract from the story, often crossing the line into bigoted and shocking language, seemingly to prove... that sometimes people think bad things? I don't think you needed to include the ableist r-word and FIVE USES of the n-word (yes, that one, hard spelling and all) in order to make those points. In addition to the ableist and frequent racist remarks, he makes homophobic jokes, uses rude or gross descriptors of characters, often minorities, and generally proves that he is not capable of handling difficult topics with nuance. He tells rather than shows the reader when characters are developing opinions or making decisions and overall treats the story as if mentioning a thing is enough to make it matter.

The book is centered around a Munchausen-by-proxy case, which is immensely fascinating and disturbing to me; yet, the novel centers around the most uninteresting characters and choices possible. There is so much more that could have been done besides making your sympathetic protagonist the privileged white man who is experiencing his first hardship and the pretty white woman who is just ethnic enough and is just so nice that it's a shame something bad happened to her. Contrast that to the hardworking black female doctor, who is almost exclusively presented as angry, can't hold a man, antisocial, neglectful of her child, etc. - and then, her concern as a physician boils down to "reverse racism" (which isn't real), and that's that. I would have more sympathy for the author's choices if we also got the things we needed: realistic portrayal of interpersonal conflict, discussion of how the case was officially escalated to the highest level of CPS, what had happened in the husband/wife relationship prior to have caused tension, what actually ended the court case, and so on. Instead, most of the book is spent showing relationships between the family and the lawyer, the doctor and her estranged dad, and more. We even get vignettes of workplace small talk (everyone's favorite!) and the 18-month-old baby having a POV about his surroundings. This man cannot be seriously writing this.

I could go on for several hours about how endlessly shallow this book is while also managing to be offensive and too long. The fact that it's presented as a serious piece of work is laughable; it feels like "fake deep" content written by teenagers. It gets two stars from me because, despite its flaws, the plot does build tension and intrigue (that it never quite resolves, unfortunately), and I have read barely-worse books. I like the concept, but the specific execution and choices leave this unsatisfying as a whole.

Content warning for infant injury, racism and racial slurs, antisemitism, homophobia, medical trauma, mental illness, brief gun violence, and death.

Please enjoy some of my favorite "what the fuck?" lines and moments below, in no particular order.

- serious use of the word "lipfart"
- "as in the case in which at [the medical center]" please help, I'm drowning in prepositions
- "eyebrow was arched like a worm touching its toes" I genuinely enjoy this visual
- "He'd lost another family" because his coworkers didn't know how to relate to his trauma, lol
- "carefully. neither quickly nor slowly"
- the lines about how easy it is to become a foster parent and that anyone can do it
- "her mouth - the meaty blossom" ew??
- Dori referring to her husband to his face as "Mr. Goldin" this feels gross (such subtle symbolism in that last name, too)
- "total nerdsville" and "she appeared loserish" this man is a joke
- "tongue-fucking these words" please take his pen away
- the time when, seemingly to build atmosphere, the author lists 32 NAMED BUSINESSES IN A ROW wtf
- "Her chin was nestled into the body's perfect chin-holder - the collarbone" lol
- referring to breasts as "swollen eyes", "chaotic", and "pendulant and liquidy" I'm so horrified
- the husband feeling guilty about when he "almost cheated" on his wife because they didn't have full sex, so it doesn't count
- the lack of explanation to what "coded" means in medical terminology, so I thought the whole time that the baby briefly died and wondered why we weren't taking things a little more seriously
- he name-dropped at least a dozen more businesses in other parts; someone please sponsor this man so he'll stop writing books

[gwen g · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is trying to take on so many Big Topics -- race, gender, class, etc., etc. -- all under the umbrella of Munchausen's by proxy, which is one of those car-wreck-curious sorts of topoics. I want to say it half-succeeds, because the book is immensely readable and the characters very believable -- especially the mother, Dori, who I imagine would have been the most difficult character to write.

But maybe it's a classic situation of Strauss biting off more than he could chew, because somehow it feels like this book just skims the surface of everything and never really gets into it. I enjoyed it, quite a lot, but it somehow didn't quite live up to its potentia.

[Ginny Velazquez · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn’t even finish it. I read 291 pages then, for the first time ever, skipped to the end to see if it was going to be worth finishing.
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🚨spoilers ahead🚨:
First, a little background: This story is about a mom who intentionally makes her child sick to try to strengthen her relationship with her husband and make him a better dad. She does this by draining his blood (she was a phlebotomist) to the point of him passing out. There is also a doctor who (eventually) recognizes what is happening and brings Child Protective Services into the mix.
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Now for my beefs with the book:
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🚨1️⃣The first time the mom makes the child sick and takes him to the hospital, the parents fight the hospital about not wanting to have more testing done. Why did the dad go along with this? If your kid is sick enough that he had to go to the hospital and even coded at some point, would you not want every test possible to figure out what happened?2️⃣The bulk of the story is unnecessary information and background that had little to no bearing on the actual story. For example, when the dr goes on a date, the point is being made that she ranted so long on a topic that it bored her date. It was not also necessary for the author to bore the reader with her entire speech.3️⃣There seem to be a lot of bigotry written into the story that did not seem pertinent. The fact that the dr is black is made a huge deal of, even though the story has nothing to do with race. Also, at one point the mom thinks the CPS agent is gay and several of her thoughts about gay people are shown, including that they hate women and have heightened perception/senses. Truly dumb stuff that made no sense.4️⃣The doctor confused me. It took her a long time to make her initial diagnosis, then she seemed truly happy about her case being made. Who WANTS to be right about a child being abused? 5️⃣I did not read the actual trial, but from reading the last few pages, it’s obvious that the parents when the trial and the child ended up back at home. I’m not sure what the deal is between the parents, but the book ends with her basically admitting to the Dad that she had been draining the child’s blood. And that’s the end. How the hell is that the end?

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Munchausen by proxy is obviously a super creepy interesting topic, but this book has too many characters, none of them really likable, and too much going on, like a character named Intelligent Muhammad, and this fake Jon Stewart monologue, ugh:

"So, I misunderstood," Jon Stewart was saying. "I thought you guys were offering me the Nightline job. Are you not ABC?"

Stewart enjoyed this joke, and to show this he turned from the microphone and covered his own laugh by moving a fist over his mouth, as you'd do after a burp.

"No, he went on, "I love"--and with practiced hesitation, during which he made a performance of looking over at a hanging poster of a WWF star, Stewart delayed saying: "Basic Cable." It was clear he was going to test the limits of a comedian's immunity--the license to insult you to your face.

[Izzy Cotenoff · Rating 2 out of 5]

boring boring boring bad boring

[Chloe (Always Booked) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went into this book very scared because I saw what low ratings it had, and I can definitely see where people are coming from. I think this book started with a very interesting premise around a mom potentially harming her baby for her own gain (Munchausen by Proxy). I've read other books about that syndrome and its so intriguing and terrifying-- its hard to lose my interest if thats the topic. However, this book had many flaws. The author spends WAY too much time on unnecessary stuff-- characters that do nothing to develop the story and side stories that have no significance (I.e. doctor going on a date, excessive stories about the dad and his thoughts on Jon Stewart, etc.) I also thought the discussions of race, gender and sexuality were done very poorly. At its core, this book is about child abuse and mental illness. If you want it to be about any of the things I just mentioned, it needs to be more well developed and sensitivity tested, in my opinion. I also thought parts of the storyline were unrealistic. The dad's actions did not align with what I think most dads would do in the situation, regardless of their wives opinions. I also thought that all of the characters were so unlikable, this book left me feeling icky and cringing instead of feeling any sort of resolution. All that being said, I did think this book was compulsively readable and interesting. I found myself wanting to know what was going to happen for the family and there was no way I'd DNF it. I think if you're wanting a book about Munchausen by Proxy, Jodi Picoult's "Keeping Faith" is MUCH better.

SPOILERS AHEAD:
This book is about a couple named Josh and Dori. They have an 8 month old son named Zach and one day, Josh gets a call at work that he's in ICU because he had blood in his vomit and then he coded. He comes back around and Dori says its time for him to leave. She doesn't want him subjected to any more tests, etc. so they take him out of the hospital, despite having no diagnosis or reason for the blood, etc. She is a phlebotomist and thinks she knows everything medical, so her husband goes along with her and takes their child out of the hospital and chalks it up to just a weird kid fluke. The doctor that treated Zach, Darlene Stokes, thinks theres something a little weird about Dori. She may or may not have lied about the tests the doctors ran, the kid was fine but then coded after Dori took him in the car, etc. So a whole court case starts up because Darlene Stokes accuses Dori of suffering from Munchausen by Proxy where she is hurting Zach to get attention for herself. She is in fact doing that because Josh is a workaholic who gives all of his energy to other people and she wants attention for herself and their family, but the court thinks she's innocent. The case becomes one of race (Dr. Stokes is black) and Dr. Stokes' ability to actually protect children when she's letting her dad (a convicted felon who was just released from jail) live with her and her 7 year old son. Josh and Dori get Zach back, but Josh always wonders if Dori was guilty. She was draining blood from their baby to make him pass out and have all of these medical problems. It's so disgusting and hard to fathom. All of the characters were so unlikable, this book left me cringing.

[Ms BooksAholic · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave this book only two stars. I was really excited to get my hands on this book and couldn't wait to get into it. Needless to say, after dragging myself to finish this book I wasn't very pleased with it. Many times I put the book down and didn't want to finish. But its hard for me to give up on any book, I try to give everyone a fair chance.
I found that the author developed too many nonessential characters. I found even the essential characters to be so unlikeable that the book didn't keep my attention. I couldn't find myself connecting with the characters at all.

Josh and Dori are living their happy life with their eight-month old son. When Dori one day rushes the baby to the emergency room. The Doctor believes there is a case of Munchausen by proxy. The novel is set in a world turned upside down-where doctors try to save babies from their parents, police use the law to tear families apart, and the people you think you know best end up surprising you the most.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you don't belong to a book club, Darin Strauss's bitter and brilliant new novel is reason enough to start one. You can always disband afterward, and in any case your discussion of More Than It Hurts You may be so heated that you'll never talk to those people again. Strauss has packed this gripping story with the whole radio dial of divisive, hot-button issues, chief among them a form of child abuse labeled Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP). Identified 30 years ago by a controversial British pediatrician named Roy Meadow, MSBP describes a monstrous set of mothers who rush their children to the hospital after injecting feces into their bloodstream, sickening them with tiny doses of poison or smothering them until they pass out. They perpetrate these and other covert acts of abuse on their own children to experience the vicarious thrill of solicitous medical attention. In the decades since he first raised the alarm about MSBP, Meadow has been censored for professional misconduct and questions have been raised about the prevalence and even the existence of this syndrome, but some doctors and social workers continue to consider it a viable explanation for mysterious, hard-to-diagnose illness when certain warning signs are present.

Dori Goldin, the mother in More Than It Hurts You, presents a textbook case of all those warning signs, and what she and her husband, Josh, endure at the St. Joseph's Medical Center is a nightmare most loving parents don't even know is possible. The novel bursts into action with the words that "snapped Josh's life into before and after." He gets a message at work that his 8-month-old son has been rushed to the emergency room. When he arrives a few minutes later, he hears that Dori had noticed blood in the baby's vomit and taken him to the hospital. The staff had checked him over, assured her that he was fine and sent them home, but in the parking lot the baby lost consciousness and needed to have his heart restarted.

The edges of this chronology are fuzzy and the doctors seem a little confused, but Dori remains amazingly calm. As a phlebotomist, a nurse trained in handling blood, "Dori spoke fluent hospital." She challenges the doctors' treatment of her son, objects to what she claims are unnecessary tests and finally stages a confrontation with the staff that requires the police to intervene.

All this makes for a tremendously exciting story, eerily similar to the recent case of the Georgetown parents who took one of their 8-month-old twins to Children's Hospital only to endure accusations of child abuse and to temporarily lose custody of both twins. But Strauss has something more ambitious in mind than merely beating Jodi Picoult to the next ripped-from-the-headlines controversy. The case of this baby's mysterious and recurring illness serves as the starting point from which to examine the health of American culture, which to Strauss looks alarmingly ill.

The omniscient narrator of More Than It Hurts You subjects all these characters to his own acerbic brutality. Josh Goldin, in particular, is whipped on almost every page for being "a genius of optimism," a Jewish Candide with "no talent for despair." Strauss tells us that "very few people met life with a face that free of grievance. . . . He felt comfortable everywhere . . . [and] lived his comfy life by having faith in people, faith that whoever he met was like him in some central way." Indeed, there's something almost unseemly about Strauss's urge to ridicule this handsome American, this "machine of happiness," who believes "his own expectations were the only forces that acted on his life." It's like watching a man beat his own dog.

Strauss made a name for himself with two historical novels based on real celebrities: Chang and Eng (2000), about the original Siamese twins, and The Real McCoy (2002), about a boxer at the turn of the last century. This time around, with an extraordinary degree of breadth and confidence, he's moved to a hyper-contemporary setting and invented his own characters. But while this is a smart, witty novel, it's also an exceptionally cynical one, in which all the characters' thoughts and actions are overdetermined by their racial, sexual and class identities.

When Strauss isn't ripping into Josh's optimism, he's subjecting American attitudes about blacks and Jews to an equally penetrating analysis. Indeed, all the good liberals who populate this novel are constantly agonizing about race. The Goldins' arch nemesis, Dr. Darlene Stokes, is the "first black woman and the youngest person that St. Joseph's Hospital had ever selected to head an ICU section," but that accomplishment can't protect her from the fear of being humiliated. She makes a point of wearing her lab coat to the cafeteria so that white people won't "mistake her for an orderly." Dr. Stokes thinks she's making the decision to take away Dori's baby on purely medical grounds, but Strauss carefully fills in the doctor's complicated personal experience with Jews in a way that tempts us to wonder if something else isn't motivating her to break up this happy family. Even when he wants to kill her, Josh reminds himself, "Stop thinking about this woman as black," while Dr. Stokes, for her part, thinks, " Clearly a Jew," before she quickly pushes "that vulgarity from her brain." And when the newspapers and cable news shows get wind of this story -- from the Goldins' crafty Jewish lawyer -- its racial elements flame it into a cause célèbre, all superbly captured with Strauss's pitch-perfect ear for media bluster and grandstanding.

As a Jew, Strauss can defend himself à la Philip Roth from the novel's juggling of anti-Semitic stereotypes, and for all his exploration of African American pathologies, he's careful to make the most successful and reformed characters black, but how will women respond to his aggressively negative and dated portrayal of motherhood? How can a novel that so smartly analyzes the racial constructs of modern life dredge up the specter of Medea so uncritically? Even way back in 1960, the feminists' boogeyman John Updike didn't let Janice drown Rabbit's baby on purpose. Despite all his modern insight and wit, Strauss ends up re-inscribing that old chauvinist canard: Men don't want to take care of their children, but they can't trust women to take care of them either.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful and poignant

[Christina M Rau · Rating 2 out of 5]

Real life is complicated. I'm sure that any life involving Munchausen is uber complicated. I'm sure that any life involving medical maladies is complicated. I'm sure that racial stereotypes and trying to break racial tension is complicated. I'm sure that class on the North Shore of Long Island is complicated. I'm sure bi-racial marriages, bad marriages, fatherless families, and fathers in jail are all complicated. After reading More Than It Hurts You, a culmination of all these issues balled up into one novel is about as complicated a tale as a season of 24 (one of the good seasons, not the one that the writers screwed up by finishing the plotline too early and then adding in what amounted to extraneous last minute filler for the second half of the season, causing most fans to throw their arms up in disgust and actually root for the terrorists).

Darin Strauss offers a detailed inside scoop on dealing with Munchausen syndrome, or as the novel calls it, Munchausen by proxy syndrome, or MBPS. That idea alone is a pretty heavy tale. The ins and outs of how it comes about, why it occurs, and the aftermath all call for an intriguing plotline.

The story finds itself on the Gold Coast, in a town I've never heard of, but I'm pretty sure Strauss has set the novel in Port Washington from all the surrounding towns and roads he includes. The element of a well-to-do family increases the intrigue of the story. The intrigue didn't need to be raised, but this element of "those who have it all can be pretty fucked up too" twists the tale just right.

Then the element of race enters along with questions about the medical community. As the story cracks open, the idea of media blitzes comes up. Then there's the recently-emerged-from-jail father of the doctor who jumps into the mix.

Too much. Because the story of Munchausen itself is such a unique idea for a novel, the extras of race, medicine, media, and drugs piles on the issues until the novel is one big burden. Less is more.

While I'm sure in real life, all these issues are not separate. In fiction, however, they can be, and in this case, they should be.

Still, the story of the young husband and wife who have a child who may be sick, either by the mother's hand or by natural, mysterious causes, is a fantastically eerie read. The story of a doctor dealing with racial tension and a father in jail is a compelling story, though not exactly new. Left to their own accord, they make for good tales. Strauss brings all the issues together by the end of the novel, but by that time, it's as if the novel has become a nightly news fiasco, which may be the point, but is also overwhelming.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were elements of this book I appreciated, and others that just seemed superfluous. For example, the author goes into great detail about the appearance of a tertiary character, in a very verbose manner than doesn't really work to add to the story or move the plot along. In fact, I'm not sure that that character himself was all that necessary. In this way, I feel that there were about 50-100 extra pages that likely could have been eliminated without shortchanging the story.

On the other hand, I was amazed to realize who I found myself rooting for and who became "the bad guy". Without giving too much away, it was odd to find out that the resolution near the end of the book was both relieving and worrisome. And the sympathies and understandings I developed for the "irrational" character were internally troublesome, too -- not quite as black and white (no pun intended on the racial undertones of the book) as one would expect.

The very ending, the last page or two, was disappointing, though. In opposition to the detail the author had went into in the rest of the book, the ending was very abrupt and left unanswered questions. I felt led on and let down like I had been through a scavenger hunt only to find out that there was no prize at the end.

Overall, this was an ok read. Not anything earth-shattering, nor did I learn much from it. Moderately entertaining, but there are better books out there.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Besides being a compelling read, this novel made me think about how well we can ever really know another person -- even, or especially a spouse. It also made me ponder right and wrong and how little the truth matters in relation to public opinion.

Strauss's stellar portrayal of people makes this story a standout. He had me at the first line: "Fifteen minutes before happiness left him, Josh Goldin led his summer intern by the elbow to share in the hallelujah of a Friday afternoon."

Josh is an ad salesman who put me in mind of Don Draper, though this tale is current. A call from his lovely young wife Dori who is with their infant son in the emergency department siphons away Josh's self-satisfaction and sends his family life into a new trajectory.

ER Dr. Darlene Stokes is an unlikely heroine. Her dedication to her job impacts the Goldin family and her own standing at the hospital.

The inevitability of the showdown between these parties reminded me of The House of Sand and Fog. I was uncomfortable when in Dori's head, but surprisingly could see how she came to the justifications she did.

Gripping with a satisfying conclusion.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first novel by Darin Strauss that I have read and I was quite impressed with the way he captured issues of race and gender in a subtle and sensitive way. The story could have easily turned into something 'obvious' and 'in your face' like the screenplay for 'Crash' or even certain moments in 'Babel' but Strauss used pacing and tone and honesty to create a novel that is both upsetting, scary, but in the end, absolutely right on the mark. And issues of race, gender and religion are only part of what makes this novel so dynamic. Strauss creates the character Josh -- a man living in oblivion and seeing the world only as he wants to -- it was these moments that really struck me. Is it better to live in our own perceptions and be happy, or is it better to face reality and and all of it's consequences?

[Giddy Girlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book on a clearance shelf years ago and picked it up thinking it was a biography of Chang and Eng, which it isn't. It's a novel loosely based on their life - or as much as we can know of their life, since a good deal of it wasn't recorded - including their dealings with royalty, the circuses, and the women they eventually married and had families with. It was interesting and well-researched. Just be sure not to quote any of the stories as fact. :)

[Evie Rabeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great idea for a plot: involving family dynamics, racism, the LI Jewish experience, Munchausen by Proxy syndrome, and more. Straus is a good writer because he makes a page turner involving characters who are all, in different ways, unlikeable. I would have scored this higher but I did feel some elements were a little farfetched and precious. However, this book will probably make a good book club read -- lots to discuss.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a novel this is. One of those semi-sweeping books that's unafraid to confront head-on modern American issues of race, prejudice, marriage, parenting, and how slippery the achievement of happiness can be. Strauss's pitch-perfect portrayal of the blissfully ignorant ad salesman Josh Goldin and the descent of his apparently perfect life into chaos is nothing short of incredible.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much long-winded prose by the author, not enough action. I struggled to finish this one- the author just kept going on and on and on and on about stuff that had very little or no bearing on the story whatsoever. It's a compelling topic- a mother accused of Munchausen by Proxy- but the author really frustrated me with his long-winded details about non-important things.

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a very good read. this book raises questions about race, social castes, morality, ethics, and america's media driven pop-culture. Through the MSBP issue and character development, the novel challenges your stance on good/evil and right/wrong

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Follows young parents & a doctor from very different backgrounds & how their lives cross when the parents are accused of an unthinkable act. Takes place on LI near where I grew up so it was fun to see some of the places I knew in print.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topic, Munchhausen's by Proxy was of interest to me, however I couldn't really realate to any of the characters. Even the doctor was a different breed. The dreamy way some of it was written didn't hold me either so I found myself glossing over some sections.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absorbing story of flawed human beings trying to do what they feel to right. This was an audio book that I had to force myself to pause so as not to stay up all night listening to the story unfold.

[Jessica AKA Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Review on my blog--

http://allrileyedup.wordpress.com/200...
more-than-it-hurts-you-by-darin-strauss/

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing and heartbreaking story, especially if you have children. A little verbose in places, but overall well writing and engaging.

[Kaeli · Rating 4 out of 5]

A haunting book about the effect of Munchausen's Syndrome on a family.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real page turner, one that you just hate to put down. I read this book in two days flat.

[Tara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cover description was captivating... and that was it. DNF pg 78. Had potential.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loving it so far. Darin is on my show in a couple of weeks....

[Zosma Leonis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A different book about Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy would be, perhaps, an outside-looking-in story, where people outside the family try to figure out why any parent, and specifically the parent in question would inflict harm on their own child. In contrast, Strauss puts the why up-front; it’s clear to the reader, and even clearer to mother who bleeds her child twice to induce anemia, why she does it.

So the rest of the book is more of a “how” or a “what” than a “why”. How do the doctors and Child Protective Services go about proving a case of Munchausen’s? How does the father, who in unaware of his wife’s activities, deal with the situation. What is the motivation of the accusing doctor? And in the end, of course, is the question of what will happen to the baby. At least it should be, but in the end even the answers to those questions are disappointing, as the whole matter is dropped over a trumped-up plot device.

Still, this could have been a good book, since it is engagingly written. Unfortunately, not a single character in this book is sympathetic (except the baby, of course). The mother obviously, is beyond unsympathetic, being so smug about her actions as to be entirely unlikeable. Even the father, a good father by most standards, is just bland to the point that I couldn’t really bring myself to care about him. Although we are shown bits of the doctor’s personal life (her interactions with her own young son, her efforts to relate to a father she’s only just met), none of these are enough to put any flesh on the character that might allow the reader to care about her, and are clearly just set pieces that try (and fail) to create some tension.