Here is a synopsis from the publisher:

To be sure, some brothers and sisters have relationships that are easy. But oh, some relationships can be fraught. Confusing, too: How can two people share the same parents and turn out to be entirely different?

Marie Brenner’s brother, Carl—yin to her yang, red state to her blue state—lived in Texas and in the apple country of Washington state, cultivating his orchards, polishing his guns, and (no doubt causing their grandfather Isidor to turn in his grave) attending church, while Marie, a world-class journalist and bestselling author, led a sophisticated life among the “New York libs” her brother loathed.

From their earliest days there was a gulf between them, well documented in testy letters and telling photos: “I am a textbook younger child . . . training as bête noir to my brother,” Brenner writes. “He’s barely six years old and has already developed the Carl Look. It’s the expression that the rabbit gets in Watership Down when it goes tharn, freezes in the light.”

After many years apart, a medical crisis pushed them back into each other’s lives. Marie temporarily abandoned her job at Vanity Fair magazine, her friends, and her husband to try to help her brother. Except that Carl fought her every step of the way. “I told you to stay away from the apple country,” he barked when she showed up. And, “Don’t tell anyone out here you’re from New York City. They’ll get the wrong idea.”

As usual, Marie—a reporter who has exposed big Tobacco scandals and Enron—irritated her brother and ignored his orders. She trained her formidable investigative skills on finding treatments to help her brother medically. And she dug into the past of the brilliant and contentious Brenner family, seeking in that complicated story a cure, too, for what ailed her relationship with Carl. If only they could find common ground, she reasoned, all would be well.

Brothers and sisters, Apples and Oranges. Marie Brenner has written an extraordinary memoir—one that is heartbreakingly honest, funny and true. It’s a book that even her brother could love.

I’ve never really done this before, but I’m deferring this entire review to Melissa over at the Book Nut (review published here at Estella’s Revenge).  Her review pretty much summed up my entire experience word for word.  So why try to reinvent the wheel?  Part of that review states amongst other observations:

I found Brenner to be ruthless in her observations, sparing no one: her family, her work companions, her current and former husbands. In addition to the biting reflections and commentary, the book is disjointed and hard to follow. She bounces around from present to past and back again, making it difficult to follow the narrative. It’s frustrating because it is difficult to get a sense of not only her relationship with her brother, but a sense of who she and her brother are.

Click on over to read more.  But perhaps for a more positive review check out Sam at Book Chase who really enjoyed it.  I guess this one just wasn’t for me.  Maybe you’ll feel differently.

Video of Marie Brenner talking about Apples and Oranges:  My Brother and Me, Lost and Found:

Rules by Cynthia Lord, is one of these books, and is a Newbery Honor book for 2007. It’s also an ALA Notable Children’s Book. Catherine, a twelve year old girl, loves her autistic little brother, David, but also resents that he comes in the way of her desire for acceptance and normalcy. Catherine has created a list of rules for David in an attempt to head off any embarrassing behaviors. These rules include:

• No toys in the fish tank
• If the bathroom door is closed, knock (especially if Catherine has a friend over)!
• At someone else’s house, you have to follow their rules
• A boy can take his shirt off to swim, but not his shorts.
• Sometimes people laugh when they like you. But sometimes they laugh to hurt you.
• You can yell on a playground, but not during dinner.
• Flush!
• Sometimes people don’t answer because they didn’t hear you. Other times it’s because they don’t want to hear you.

Catherine has a set of unwritten rules that she follows herself. Some of these include:

• Leaving out isn’t the same as lying.
• Not everything worth keeping has to be useful.
• If you don’t want to do something, say, “Hmm. I’ll think about it” and maybe the asker will forget the whole bad idea.
• If you want to get away from someone, check your watch and say, “Sorry, gotta go!”
• Sometimes you’ve gotta work with what you’ve got.
• If you want to change the subject, confuse the other person by going off on a wild, chatty detour.
• When someone is upset, it’s not a good time to bring up your own problems.
• When you say something stupid, gloss over it with superfast talking and maybe no one’ll notice.

Through the simple plot, Catherine learns how to let go, be herself, and not worry about what others think. This book is perfect for those families or young siblings whose lives are impacted by a special needs child. It’s also perfect for families or children who would like to learn empathy, see the world through someone else’s eyes and learn what it’s like to be different.

Cynthia Lord’s website here.

In Cut, Callie is a self-destructive, withdrawn, and unresponsive teenage who finds herself in residential therapy after her school nurse and parents find out that she’s been cutting herself. Callie doesn’t speak to anyone and tells her story to the reader in a first person narrative letter written to her therapist. Her self-mutilation or cutting, makes her feel alive and she cannot resist the urges when they overtake her. She wants to get better though, so with the threat of expulsion from the treatment facility, she begins to open up and hands over anything in which to cut herself. Underneath the cutting lies the reason for it and that reason is slowly revealed as a traumatizing event in which she felt responsible for her brothers near death. This was McCormick’s first novel and I’m sure that it has given voice to the girls and young women who engage in this type of behavior.

In My Brother’s Keeper, Toby Malone is like any other kid except he’s got exactly 52 gray hairs, is the youngest kid in his class because he skipped a grade, collects baseball cards long after most kids have given it up, thinks his dad who walked out on the family will still return, worries that his mom has enough to deal with so he throws away the overdue credit card bills, and oh, he hides his older brother, Jake’s, drug use. In this story, Toby knows what all the answers are about drugs from videos from school, but doesn’t know how to deal with it when the drug user is his older brother. This story approaches a serious subject matter that I’m sure many children are familiar with and gives them a voice (wait, did I say that about Cut too?).

Patricia McCormick is a very talented author and chooses such serious subject matters and gives them illumination. I enjoyed reading all three of her books, Cut, My Brother’s Keeper, and Sold, but enjoyed Sold the best. If you were to read just one book by McCormick, make it Sold.