EDIT
I wrote the thoughtful and very long review that you can read down here.
I also gave the book 4 stars.
Then I realised that I had been so focused on separating the burnt curtains from the salvageable ones, that I had missed the fact that this house is on fire.
This book is not about schizophrenia. It is about a family rife with parental neglect, and with sexual, emotional and physical abuse, in which six out of twelve children ALSO had schizophrenia.
However, Kolker decided that the family problems were all due to the schizophrenia, so creating a very dangerous and unjust equation between schizophrenia and being a violent abuser and a killer.
This is untrue, unfair to people who suffer from schizophrenia (one of whom I had the pleasure to have in my life, and I say pleasure, yes, because she was an amazing person) and very dishonest.
So, read the following if you want, but beware: I DID slam the door on myself about this one, because it tricked me into not seeing the forest for the trees...

ORIGINAL REVIEW
It is difficult, maybe impossible, to judge this book impartially. Its topic and the events talk to our worst fears, hidden and declare values, and deep feelings: family dysfunction, unforgiving mental illness, American society and its demands on the middle class in the last century, sexual, emotional and physical abuse, and the role of parents in shaping the lives of their children. Whoa. There is enough to have a heated discussion with oneself, and leave the room slamming the door.
So, maybe, it is best to look at the degree of respect and thoroughness with which the people involved are given (or denied) a voice.
On one side, only the two sisters engaged with the writer, while the ten boys, sick or "sane", chose to keep their distance. The imbalance in representation is visible, and while the damaged, sick and frail brothers are given, in the last chapter, some voice, the non-schizophrenic siblings who made a life for themselves come out as a bit two-dimensional; one feels close to smell some judgement in which their life choices are treated, but not quite. Let's say that Kolker stops short of harsh judgement throughout the story. Also, a quality of his narration that I appreciated is that he did not refrain from analysing some manipulative elements in the way the two narrating sisters managed family relations in adult life, but he also keeps a deep, and, I think, honest empathising attitude towards all people involved.
On the other side, the role and figures of the parents, who were in danger of become either the villains or the misunderstood martyrs of the tale, are analysed with rare equanimity and humanity, and I have to say that this is what endeared the book to me. I will never get to understand how people with an education can put twelve children in the world, and then leave the younger girls and boys in the hands of clearly unstable adult or adolescent brothers, but I know something about denial, societal pressure, fragility and about how much of a Catch 22 it is to deal with mental illness in the family and get out of it squeaky clean, and Kolker managed to convey all the complexity of the situation. Understandably, he had a more delicate hand in treating the personality and actions of the mother, who was there all along while daddy studied, had a career, and even enjoyed his extra-marital affairs (think: Mad Man goes even more horribly wrong than you thought it had already gone...)
Finally, I found the scientific chapters interesting, if not always well intertwined with the biography sections. Maybe here there is too much eagerness, especially in the first part of the narration, to discount the role of the environment in the development of full-fledged schizophrenia. It looks as if Kolker was tempted to make martyrs out of the parents, and then achieved a more balanced view, in which the discovery of certain genetic and neurological markers associated with schizophrenia does not cancel the possibility that the chaotic and emotionally abusive (or at least inadequate) environment in which the children grew had a big role in the tragic outcome. Sure thing, the pharmacological "therapies" had on the sick brothers as horrifically imparing, and sometime lethal, consequences as the illness itself. Kolker had the merit of balancing different possibilitiesm and of giving a clear and honest view of the incompleteness of our current understanding of schizophrenia, but it still feels weird that he left this imbalance in judgement in the first part of the book, as if he still wants us to take the mother's defence.
In the same way, I wish there would have been some more clarification of the difference between the horrifying but justifiable aggression that can come with psychotic crises, for whom I feel sorrow, and the sexual abuse and feminicide that seemed to be a staple attitude of some family member, not to talk about the parents visibly looking the other way, and also exposing their children to the paedophile priest (because the poor children were not unhappy enough, so their parents thought it necessary to let yo'man pick his prey at will, as one of the girls puts it). Now, this is a big alarm ringing about some stone left unturned in this family's dynamics and there is not much in terms of trying to divide the victim of illness from the perpetrator of rape and homicide/suicide. It nearly looks like some of the poor women and children victim of these crimes are collateral damage of the suffering of the perpetrators, and this was hard to forgive. On the other hand, some other episodes (the ones that involve the sisters) are more fleshed out and seen from the victim's point of view, and it is made clear how the family cut their ties with one the rapist male brothers, while the other was too far gone in his medicated absence and beyond understanding what was asked of him. Maybe this lack of focus on the two wives victims of their husbands is, once more, due to a lack of first-hand documentation.
Apart for this major blunder, Kolker managed to make me empathise with people for whom, starting the book, I had nothing but contempt, and this without hiding hard facts. He made me question my values and my tendency to judge harshly when it comes to family dynamics, and he managed to present different and divergent ways to cope with a painful past as equally valid.
A book that needs to be read, whatever its shortcomings. ( )

I listened to this as an audiobook. Some of it was so horrifying that I had to stop for a while and process what I had just heard. I can't imagine living in a house like the Galvins'. While I have compassion for the six brothers who suffered from schizophrenia, I cannot imagine how the other children survived. Admirably, Mimi, their mother, and now Lindsey, their sister never gave up on them. It teaches you about being "your brother's keeper". The research into schizophrenia has been enriched through studying this family. ( )

It’s a tough book to read, but the story is truly fascinating and the author has done an amazing job ( )

Don and Mimi seemed to have the perfect, if unusually large, family. He was military, but liberal-minded. She was a supporter of the arts and active in the community despite having 12 children in 20 years. Good in school, athletic, musically inclined, the ten boys and two girls seemed cut from the All-American mold. Then one after another, six of the boys would suffer spectacular breakdowns and eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia. At first, Don and Mimi tried to gloss over the violence and eccentricities that tainted their middle-class bubble. But soon, tragedy would make that impossible.

Interspersed with chapters about different members of the family, are chapters about the history of schizophrenia, it's diagnosis and treatment, and the researchers who tried to find the genetic markers and better ways to treat or prevent the disease. While researching the book, the author interviewed, not only all the living members of the family, but the doctors, researchers, and therapists who worked with the family or with their DNA. The result is a family biography put into context with the medical history. For me, this saved the book from being voyeuristic. I was glad to know that the entire family consented to having their very personal story told. I thought it was well-written and balanced, addressing many of the social issues surrounding mental illness with objective compassion. ( )

Carefully documented, compassionate, and absorbing account of a family of 12 children growing up in Colorado mid 20th c. Of the 10 boys of Don and Mimi Galvin, 6 are diagnosed with schizophrenia or related psychoses as they become late teens. Their lives become dominated by violence and abuse. The author interweaves a history of schizophrenia treatment and controversy with the Galvin's story in an unforgettable narrative of family crises, love, and pain. ( )