Everything Is Fine by Vince Granata is a deeply personal and poignant memoir that explores the complexities of mental illness, grief, and family bonds. Granata recounts the devastating impact of his brother’s struggle with schizophrenia, which ultimately led to an unimaginable tragedy—the murder of their mother. With unflinching honesty and profound compassion, he navigates the intersections of love, loss, and the limits of understanding.

What makes this book stand out is its delicate balance between personal narrative and broader discussions on mental health, stigma, and the gaps in the healthcare system. Granata’s writing is both lyrical and raw, drawing readers into the emotional turmoil while also offering moments of reflection and hope.

A heartbreaking yet necessary read, Everything Is Fine challenges readers to rethink how we talk about and approach mental illness. Fans of memoirs like The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang or The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon will find this book especially compelling.

Vince Granata was an only child until age 4 when the miracle of IVF gave him three siblings. Triplets Christopher, Timothy and Elizabeth looked up to him, had raucous playtime sessions with him and built many lovely memories together.



Twenty years later, Timothy became schizophrenic, and from there stemmed the biggest tragedy of their lives as a family when Tim stabbed their mother Claudia to death. While Christopher and Elizabeth cannot imagine someone they shared a womb with acting out as he did, their father continues to stand by Tim and his need for medical aid, while Vince takes it upon himself to understand schizophrenia in an attempt to make sense of their lives and so as not to lose sight of his own love for Tim.



The writing is moving and kind, as Vince throws light on the family dynamics, the love that bound them together and the illness that stabbed the core of the family. As Vince shares the happy memories of his family, we are given a glimpse into how Tim’s mind betrayed him, twisting those memories around.



At every step, Vince has taken his role seriously: as his parents’ deputy and as chronicler of the tragedy that has befallen them. Even as a grown man, he sees himself as his mother’s deputy, wanting to forgive and understand his brother.



Vince dips into his memories to remind himself of all that was good about Tim and how schizophrenia took it away.



The author gives us an understanding of schizophrenia, how the illness sneaks up not only on the affected person, but also on the family. The book fills you with compassion for those suffering from mental illness, which we all fear and look upon with distaste.



The book is both deeply personal and well researched. The author drowned himself in books and studies about schizophrenia. He tells us about the laws governing the treatment of schizophrenics in the US, about his fears that he failed his brother.



The research is not limited to reading alone. The author has spent time talking to family members of those affected by schizophrenia, doctors and social workers and patients living with schizophrenia.



To those of us who use the word, schizophrenia, as an insult or a slur, this book is an eye-opener. The author calls for more schizophrenia stories to widen our awareness of the illness.



The name of the book comes from the phrase, Everything is Fine, which Vince’s mom used to use to preface her texts to him, when giving him updates about Tim. Everything is Fine was a way of de-escalating the situation, preventing the buildup of stress, until the time when the word, but, needed to be appended to the phrase.

I've tried to read this book a few times now. Even ended up borrowing it from a friend. It grabs my attention, but not enough te fully read it. Somehow, the plot is a bit boring but the idea is great. For me it was mostly the characters who didn't connect. I felt a bit distanced towards them and I wasn't able to band with them to fully understand their choices and actions.

Everything is Fine is a powerful and informative book. I was pulled in from the beginning as the story unfolded of a family dealing with a son who has schizophrenia. This was an interesting read from a psychological perspective and also from a personal perspective.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for a complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

A tough read. The opening pages of this memoir were so shockingly disturbing. A horrific tragedy of a mom who violently dies by the hands of her mentally ill son.. Everything Is Fine is a book to be read and discussed. It's a portrayal about the power of forgiveness in the face of immeasurable loss, as well as a testament to grappling with the complexity of mental illness in those whom we love most.

In stunningly raw and vivid prose, Vince Granata examines the tragedy that ripped his family apart in his ironically titled memoir, EVERYTHING IS FINE. Writing about mental illness, grief and the systems that prevent real care for those who suffer, Granata covers the full spectrum of human emotion --- from anger to shame, forgiveness to hope, and everything in between.

Granata was four years old the day his mother and father came home with his three new siblings: Christopher, Timothy and Elizabeth. In an instant his family doubled in size, and he proudly and exuberantly took on the role of older brother. Twenty-three years later, Tim would violently kill their mother, the penultimate moment of his increasingly erratic and disturbing battle with schizophrenia, forever changing the fabric of the Granata family’s lives and forcing each of them to confront Tim’s mental illness. In the aftermath, Granata pieces together his family’s history from the day the triplets came home to the day his mother died on their family room floor, asking how such a joy-filled event --- the miraculous birth of three desperately wanted children --- could start the countdown to murder.

Granata is an expert curator of memories. Despite the horror that we know is coming for his family, he is able to relay warm, happy memories from his youth to introduce readers to Tim. With humor and heart, he talks about the way his father sheathed the family furniture in pink foam board when the triplets started to walk; the way his mother walked them around on a leash (their “tails”) so that they could experience the world together; and even the fights in which he and his siblings displayed their childhood might, protected by bouncy foam weapons. It is clear from the start that Granata always took his role as a big brother seriously. How could he not, with so many young charges looking up to him and following his lead? Even as a child, Granata often found himself aligned with his parents, while the triplets formed alliances among themselves, with Chris and Tim becoming the closest of brothers and best friends.

The Granatas, an upper middle-class family, had disposable income, access to good health care, food on the table, and plenty of extracurriculars to keep the children busy and well-rounded. So how could Tim’s mental illness have snuck its way into their lives?

As Granata tells it, Tim’s shift started in high school, an almost impossible time to make any real evaluations of a person’s mental health or grip on reality. Tim, a brick house of a boy, went from playing football to lifting weights to dominating his school’s wrestling team, a feat that earned him the respect of his peers, who adored him as a gentle giant. He spoke in funny accents in class, carried his injured brother off a football field and performed in jazz ensembles. But all the while, “Tim was accelerating. Somehow it started, on an atomic level, a single cell, something misfiring, an electron hitting the wrong synapse, a chemical imbalance slowly putrefying his brain.”

This fracturing of his psyche continued in college, first diagnosed as “severe depression” and later as psychosis NOS, “not otherwise specified.” Writing with the grit of a journalist, Granata quickly breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the bible of psychology) definition of schizophrenia and psychosis, and how people suffering from single psychotic episodes and others descending rapidly into madness are grouped under the same umbrella, often in ways that put them in danger.

As Tim’s mental illness continues to take hold, first in suicidal ideation and later in an obsession with good and evil and the depravity that divides them, Granata highlights how his schizophrenia starts to work on separating him from the world. First, his illness adopts a malleable religious language, a “spiritual vocabulary that [animates] his delusions,” convincing him that others are corrupt, that he cannot connect with his peers. At first this helps Tim shape the world he struggles to recognize. But, as Granata comes to learn, it goes hand-in-hand with anosognosia, a form of denial that is neurologically programmed into the minds of the mentally ill that forces them to create and accept illogical explanations for the symptoms of their diseases.

Writing from a brother’s perspective, Granata painstakingly details how difficult this hardwired denial is to combat. Even more eloquently, he describes his --- and his family’s --- comprehension of the early symptoms of Tim’s illness as delusions themselves. Having never dealt with a mental illness as destructive and devastating as Tim’s, it is easy for Granata to feel angry at Tim’s denial, take too much stock in his brief moments of lucidity, or, even worse, poke holes in his careful understandings of the world his brain has created. Delusions beget delusions beget delusions, all as the medical community turned a blind eye to the powder keg that was building in the Granata home.

Writing about the day of his mother’s murder, Granata is clear-eyed, almost too graphic. He provides a detailed timeline and the thoughts that took hold of his brother, who by then believed that his parents had sexually abused him as a child. I won’t share the details of that day here, but what happens after is one of the most powerful, transformative bits of writing I have ever had the honor of reading. As Granata writes, “At first, I fought back, tried to separate my life into before and after, as though memories were photographs to sort into albums.” When he breaks through this linear way of thinking and focuses instead on the complex and layered emotions that drive memory, the book takes on a somehow even more shocking and earth-shattering tension as he moves toward honoring his mother, forgiving his brother and finding himself in the process.

EVERYTHING IS FINE is an immediately gripping book, not least for its ripped-from-the-headlines topic. But this is no shock-value memoir by someone looking to trauma dump their story into the lives of others with no follow-up. Granata is an eerily prescient writer who is able to look at the big picture of even the smallest, most tender and intimate moments. What is so impressive about this book is not the shock and horror of what happened to Tim or what he did to his mother, but the ways that Granata is able to weave a tapestry of loss --- Tim’s loss of his control, his mother’s loss of life, Chris’ loss of his best friend and womb-mate --- into something that perfectly demonstrates the ways that we have failed our mentally ill neighbors and the families who love them. Through his salvaging of the Tim he grew up with (which is not easy, not taken or given lightly), Granata is able to explore decades of reform in mental illness care, the changing bonds of familial love, and, of course, the binds of grief and anger.

Haunting, poignant and eye-opening, EVERYTHING IS FINE is a testament not only to a brother’s love, but to a family’s ability to heal. Vince Granata is a cadenced, courageous writer you won’t soon forget.

•Not My Cup of Tea•

This one personally wasn’t my typical kind of read - I can definitely understand why some would enjoy it. I wasn’t the intended audience and I personally would still recommend it if this is your typical genre. It just wasn’t something I could connect to.

Holy cow, this is intense. This memoir grabbed me from the very first page. Vince and his family has had to deal with the impossible - the murder of their mother at the hands of their schizophrenic brother. The heaviness of this event is felt through every page, every sentence. The bravery and vulnerability that is displayed in telling this story is astounding.

Vince shows extreme compassion and empathy towards his ailing brother, delving deeply into the mental health issues his brother battles everyday. He identifies the ways in which the health care system tried and failed to help his brother and the gaps in knowledge that still pervade. He reveals the different ways each of his family members dealt with the grief of losing their mother, as well as their existing relationship with Tim, the brother who is still battling his own demons.

This story and this book is truly one of a kind.

Everything is Fine by Vince Granata is a deep dive into his mother’s grisly death at the hands of his younger brother while in the throes of psychosis. Several years ago, one of my coworkers was killed in a similar circumstance by his son, so I was both curious and a little apprehensive to read this. Granata gives a sensitive and thorough account of his brother Tim’s deepening mental illness and battle with schizophrenia and the aftermath of violence wrought on their mother. As expected, this is a very heavy, heartbreaking read. Some parts are incredibly visceral and upsetting.

Granata deftly explains the huge range of gut-wrenching emotions and thoughts he went through, from anger, profound sadness, guilt, shame, etc. He also gives the background of what a family goes through when a loved one is battling mental illness. The struggles are immense even when a family has every advantage, like the means, knowledge, and time to devote to their loved one. Granata writes in a very empathetic, curious way to try to understand how his brother’s paranoia and anger, caused by his illness, could commit such an act of violence. Granata reflects on how his relationships with his siblings and father changes and figuring out how to repair relationships after such a tragedy. We learn what healing and unconditional love can look like and how it can look different for each person. I loved the parts where he describes his mother and how special she was. Everything Is Fine is a truly wonderful, heartbreaking memoir.

Thank you Atria Books and NetGalley for providing this ARC.

Thank you Netgalley for the e-book of Everything is Fine by Vince Granata in exchange for my review.

From the blurb: “In this extraordinarily moving memoir about grief, mental illness, and the bonds of family, a writer delves into the tragedy of his mother’s violent death at the hands of his brother who struggled with schizophrenia. Perfect for fans of An Unquiet Mind and The Bright Hour.”

Trigger warnings for this book include murder, mental illness, and suicide.

This book starts off with our author, Vince, receiving a phone call notifying him of his mother’s death at the hands of his younger brother, Tim. We learn that Tim was diagnosed but untreated for schizophrenia. What brings Tim to this point?

This was such a heartbreaking and raw yet eye-awakening story about mental illness in the United States. We absolutely must do more for those who suffer from mental illnesses.

Author Vince Granata's younger brother, gripped by unmedicated schizophrenia, killed their mother in their childhood home.

In this memoir, Granata remembers his mother while navigating the pain of losing her as well as watching a family member experience delusions and psychosis. He does describe his mother's death in detail (though that specific part can be skipped over, do please note it's later referenced during the trial).

Everything Is Fine took me weeks to read -- this wasn't a book I could sit with for very long. Knowing how the story ended didn't make it any easier to bear witness to this family's trauma. (Granted, it was also slow in places, especially in the first half as the author describes scenes from their childhood. I understand why those are in the book, but I think they might have been edited down some.)

At its heart, this is a book about family and grief. I'm grateful for the care the author took in describing mental illness, and for sharing this story.

Overall, I felt kinda meh about this book. Not necessarily bad, but not particularly memorable either. Giving it 2.5/5 Stars.

Holy, moly, what a tearjerker. I cannot even imagine what this family has been (and will continue to go) through!! I happened to start reading Everything Is Fine by Vince Granata the day after our friend showed up at our house in the midst of a manic episode and refused to let us take him to get help. I struggled to separate parts of Vince’s writing about his brother’s illness from what I had observed in our friend (who is actually in treatment now being evaluated). He showed up here with delusions of grandeur believing God was telling him all these things and with an invented story of childhood sexual trauma he was using to justify all the racing thoughts and emotions he was having. He admitted to seeing things that weren’t there and hearing things no one else could hear but insisted he didn’t need to be evaluated by a psychiatric professional because he was afraid he’d lose his job and his right to carry a weapon. It was a scary and horribly frustrating weekend spent trying to convince this friend to seek help before he or someone he loved got hurt. I related to everything Vince spoke of about agnosnosia. I think I highlighted all the medical information in this book. I kept telling my husband ‘see?? This is exactly what our friend is doing! We are right to insist he needs help beyond what we can provide.’ I pray that he is getting the help he needs and that his story won’t have a tragic ending, but it really startled me at how timely a read this one was and gave me a level of empathy for the Granata family I may have otherwise missed at any other time of reading. Thank you so very much to the publisher for the privilege of reading an advanced copy of this book, and so much more thanks to the author for his courage in writing his family’s story.

I don’t read a lot of memoirs, but the description for this one compelled me to read it as I want to learn more about mental illness and minimize the stigma. This memoir is well written, although very difficult to read at times.

Vince is the older brother to his triplet siblings – Christopher, Timothy, and Elizabeth. Vince’s memories are clear on the day they came home from the hospital and he shares anecdotes about growing up in Connecticut with them and his parents – both doctors.

The title of the memoir is a reference to something his mother frequently said but things are not fine in this family. Timothy has struggles with mental illness and they really escalate and he chooses to not take any medication as a young adult. He’s at Lehigh on a wrestling scholarship and nearly graduates. However, at home, things take a very dark turn and Timothy kills his mother and then turns himself in.

This memoir is the journey that Vince takes, researching Timothy’s illness – schizophrenia – and the path to reconciling his love (and forgiveness) for a sibling with the violence he committed. This quote was so powerful: “I love my brother—and—my brother killed our mother.”

Vince shares what it was like to go through Timothy’s trial and the impact on each family member. This was a very personal look into a family’s dark moments.

One fascinating part for me was reading about anosognosia, which is where someone is unaware of their illness, they don’t think anything is wrong with them. This was so well explained by the author that I feel I have a slightly better understanding of schizophrenia.

This is a book I won’t forget anytime soon and I think it would make an excellent book to discuss.

I hope this book helped Vince grieve for the family members he lost through mental health. I found the book to be tragic, slow at times, and yet educational as I know very little about mental health and the impacts it can have on a family. It is hard to give this book a rating due to the fact that this book is about the author's personal journey of distress and pain (and who wants to give that a score).

I picked this book up on a whim because it sounded interesting, and that it certainly was, but the word interesting is such a disservice to the overall content of the book. It shows a real life perspective on dealing with and loving someone who is schizophrenic, as well as the effects it has on their family. There honestly is so much I could say about it because it talks about so many different aspects of this family's situation. It's very emotional, sad, heartwarming, thought-provoking, the list could go on and on. Definitely hope a lot of people will pick this up. It would be an excellent choice for a book club.

I applaud Vince Granata on his debute novel and on the fact that he tackles a touch subject on so many levels. The topic of mental health is so important and awareness is needed. He takes a look at it in a way that I hope others do not have to in the future. His brother has Schizoprenia and it causes delusions that lead him to kill his mother. This is known from the back cover. What is a surprise is Vince's ability to continue a relationship with his brother after the devastating circumstances that take place. I cannot imagine putting myself in Vince's shoes or being as understanding as he is.

His writing is powerful. You can tell he loves his brother and is deperately seeking the right way to approach his brother, live with his brother and help him to become better, just like his mom did in her lifetime. It is touching and hard to read at the same time, not due to the writing, but due to the subject matter.

I wish he had touched more on his other brother and his sister, but his experiences were not their experiences, even though they shared the same trauma, it was different for each of them, so I understand the reason for not developing that part of the story. I am left wondering where his brother, Tim, will end up in life, and I am also left wondering how we as a society can do better so this does not happen again. What is the answer to this disease?

Vince Granata shares a heartbreaking, yet hope filled, family story surrounding the murder of his mother at the hands of his schizophrenic younger brother. This memoir was wonderfully written and truly expressed all sides of this awful tragedy. I was especially touched by Vince’s choice to continue his relationship with his brother and offer him support and forgiveness. One of the best memoirs that I’ve read in a long time.

“I love my brother—and—my brother killed our mother.”

The mind, man. What a fickle beast. It is simply fascinating. I knew within the first 3 pages of this book that it would be a five star read for me. I stand by that initial assessment.

And also, I am sufficiently creeped out. As I started this book I was wearing a Yale New Haven Hospital fleece, the hospital where his brother was treated. Vince and his family vacationed in the same area of the Cape that I did as a child and that my parents now reside in. I attended his prep schools rival. And despite this happening in my state, neither my husband nor I remember this tragedy. This one hits close.

“I saw his psychosis as a shroud covering his recent history, concealing the final months when his illness had festered untreated, his madness putrefying his brain.”

This book is raw and unfiltered and devastatingly honest. I devoured it and cannot recommend it highly enough. You would be hard pressed to find a single person out there who has not been touched by mental illness in some way. Although this story is an extreme case it is, unfortunately, not unheard of.

Thank you to Netgalley, Atria Books and the author for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Book review: 'Everything is Fine' is a groundbreaking memoir
By ASHLEY RIGGLESON FOR THE FREE LANCE–STAR
Representation of schizophrenia in the media is often quite poor, but début memoirist Vince Granata aims to change that in his memoir “Everything is Fine.”

At first it seems that Granata is about to take the opposite approach. As the memoir opens, readers become quickly aware that the author’s brother Tim, while in the grips of a psychotic episode, killed their mother. But Granata instead sets a different tone, referencing a yearslong healing process and documenting the family lore surrounding the birth of his siblings (triplets—Tim is one). As the text progresses, Granata works to humanize Tim and recount his eventual deterioration.

Make no mistake, this is a groundbreaking memoir and a work of extraordinary empathy. Though Tim unquestionably committed a terrible act of violence, Granata pores over the records of Tim’s illness and makes a real attempt to understand his brother’s head space and to convey this state to readers. At the same time, Granata grieves the death of his mother and tries to hold what remains of his family together.

Though this book is ultimately a hopeful one, what struck me most was the enormity of the tragedy, the twin losses of Granata’s mother and brother. And the writer shows us his grief, as well, revealing intimate details of his journey to reconcile the brother he has loved almost his whole life and the terrible act Tim commits after the onset of his Schizophrenia. Granata also struggles to fill the role of eldest sibling, feeling that it is his responsibility to help his siblings through their trauma surrounding the event.

I had certain expectations about this memoir going in to it. I thought Granata might perpetuate certain harmful myths about chronic mental illness, but I am glad to say he subverted these expectations. Though readers ultimately know where Granata is going to take us in this memoir, “Everything is Fine” remains (though it feels wrong to say so) a purposive book that will hold readers in thrall. It is difficult to read at times, but Granata writes so well that readers will be invested until the very end. Rather than lingering on the sadness, this compassionate and profoundly moving memoir instead reminds us of the strength of familial bonds and asks us to look beyond stereotypes surrounding mental illness when seeking to understand others.

Ashley Riggleson is a freelance writer from Rappahannock County.
More Information
EVERYTHING IS FINE: A Memoir

By Vince Granata

(Atria Books, $27, 304 pages)

Published: April 27, 2021