Apples & Oranges (Brenner)

Book Reviews 
Thanks to his sister's new book, Apples & Oranges, Carl Brenner did not succeed in vanishing without a trace. Rather, his life, with all its startling twists and turns, and his singular, sometimes maddening personality are magically conjured for us in these pages, as Ms. Brenner uses the prism of her love and grief for her brother—and her bewilderment too—to create a haunting portrait of him and their family. She has written a book that captures the nervous, emotionally strangled relationship she shared with him for the better part of their lives, a book that explores the difficult algebra of familial love and the possibility of its renewal in the face of impending loss…a beautifully observed and deeply affecting memoir, a book written with the unsparing eye of a journalist and the aching heart of a sister.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


In Apples and Oranges, Marie Brenner has delivered a majestic little book. She deepens a tragicomic story into a meditation on family and fate... In Brenner’s sympathetic portrait, Carl becomes a nuanced conservative character. ‘Sometimes you do not get to understand everything,’ she concludes. Family trumps politics, and Marie comes to accept her brother’s tough love. One day, brother and sister climb ‘through the Galas, up through the Bartletts, the valley stretched out before us. We’re standing in a row of saplings, just planted in this sandy loam soil that he has named after our father. The Milton bloc. ‘This is where I want my ashes scattered,’ he says. ‘Are you listening to me?’ Marie was listening closer than Carl ever imagined. His ashes are scattered throughout this mystical book.
James Panero - New York Times Book Review


At 3, Carl Brenner welcomed his baby sister into the world by tossing her out the window. The family joked that Carl gave Marie the gift of a hard head, an asset fully in evidence—along with her hungry heart—in her memoir, Apples & Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found. More than any other book in recent memory, this one grabs the problem of sibling rivalry by the throat and shakes relentlessly. Carl is dying as the book begins, and Marie, now a celebrated reporter, has found her way back into his life, after decades of soul-bashing standoffs, using her investigative skills to probe the mysteries of his disease—and of their tormented relationship. She may never learn what drove her imperious, obsessive-compulsive, "charm-free" brother to give up a career as a trial lawyer to grow apples in Washington State; or what entrenched family dynamic doomed the siblings to reach for each other only across a "canyon of rage." But it is Marie's furious search for answers that gives this book its power, exposing the sweetness at the core of an embattled love.
O, The Oprah Magazine


"Perplexing" was the family euphemism for Brenner's older brother Carl; the less tactful thought him "unknowable," "charm-free" or plain "weird." At 13, in San Antonio, Tex., where his father owned a discount store, Carl joined the John Birch Society. At 40, he left his career as a trial lawyer to become an apple farmer in Washington's Cascade Mountains. Brenner (House of Dreams) and he were on barely civil terms, but when he was 55, he was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, glandular cancer, and asked Marie for help. She responded, leaving her family in New York to be with Carl, who rejected conventional treatment, and to follow him as far away as China for "scorpion patches," herbs and red meat for "yang deficit." The cancer spread quickly; meanwhile, Marie sought to investigate her family's present and past among her father's feuding siblings, including writer Anita Brenner (who became part of Mexico City's art scene that included Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo). And with this research, Brenner courageously and affectingly plumbs the depths of often complex family and sibling relationships.
Publishers Weekly


Vanity Fair writer-at-large Brenner pens an absorbing account of her fractious relationship with her brother. The granddaughter of a Texas discount-store magnate, the author flinched from the ultra-conventional assumptions of her affluent family. (As a college student in the 1960s, she was chagrined to receive an unrequested package of panty girdles from her mother.) Inspired by the example of her aunt Anita, who ran away to Mexico at age 19, befriended Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and became a freelance writer, Brenner thwarted expectations and forged a successful career in journalism that included a pioneering stint as a baseball columnist in Boston. In the autumn of 2001, she traveled from New York to Washington state, determined to explore long-standing tensions with her ailing older brother Carl, a fiery-tempered trial lawyer who'd left his career to cultivate apples. In deft, nuanced prose, Brenner crafts a saga that is part family memoir, part psychological thriller and riveting overview of the U.S. apple-growing industry. The nonlinear narrative never falters as it moves adeptly back and forth in time. Readers will be captivated by the author's unvarnished yet balanced portrait of her difficulties with a combative sibling who routinely ridiculed her leftist politics and peppered his conversations with tirades about bruised apples and pears. Brenner, who accompanied the ill Carl on a medical research trip to China, details the hurt, hostilities and betrayals she endured with deep compassion and an understanding heart. She also offers vivid examples of the tactics she used to counter her brother's outlandish behavior and belligerence. Foreshadowed in a stylish prose riff, the book's carefully executed denouement still packs a powerful punch. A rich and masterful memoir with great value for aspiring practitioners of the genre, as well as discerning readers.
Kirkus Reviews