Inside Lisa Genova's medical best sellers
Lisa Genova's improbable journey from neuroscientist to hit novelist includes a storybook scene right out of fiction: sitting at the Academy Awards in joyful tears, watching Julianne Moore win an Oscar for Still Alice.
"It is beyond surreal that it all happened," says Genova, 44, who self-published Still Alice in 2007 and sold the book out of her car trunk when she couldn't interest a literary agent.
That was then. Today Genova's fictional story about a 50-year-old college professor with early onset Alzheimer's is a best seller (Still Alice reached No. 10 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list earlier this year). Genova is now published by a major New York publishing house, and she has carved out an unusual, successful niche writing novels about people suffering from neurological disorders such as autism (Love Anthony) and traumatic brain injury (Left Neglected).
Her fourth novel, Inside the O'Briens (Gallery Books), focuses on a Boston cop with Huntington's disease and his four kids, all in their 20s, each of whom stands a 50-50 chance of getting the fatal genetic condition.
"Most people have never heard of this disease," says Genova, who lives on Cape Cod with her family. "I wanted to raise much-needed awareness and urgency around the people living with Huntington's."
About 30,000 people in the U.S. have Huntington's. It's a rare, cruel disease that causes lurching movements, making patients appear drunk or on drugs. There is no cure.
"With Huntington's you lose control of voluntary movement, and you have a lot of involuntary movement," says Genova. "Your arm might fling out, or you stumble when you walk, or, since your tongue's a muscle, you start slurring your words. You eventually can't walk at all, you can't feed yourself, you can't speak." Patients also have cognitive and psychiatric symptoms including "obsessive-compulsive disorder, paranoia, rage and memory impairment."
Genova, who has left behind her science career to write full time, once thought she would do research that might lead to treatments or cures for brain diseases. Instead, her novels are opening eyes.
"Most people are not going to pick up The Journal of Neuroscience and read about Huntington's disease, but they might read a book called Inside the O'Briens," she says.
Genova says she was spurred to write Still Alice, her first book, because her grandmother had Alzheimer's, and now, she marvels, "Alzheimer's looks like Julianne Moore."
Of Moore's performance, Genova says: "You can't overdramatize this role, you can't minimize it, you have to hit that really delicate sweet spot of authenticity and she really nailed it. I'm so grateful to her."
Genova, who besides the Oscars attended several Still Alice film premieres, says her next novel will be about ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). It's to honor Richard Glatzer, co-director of Still Alice, who died of ALS in March.
Though she has not yet sold film rights to Inside the O'Briens, Genova has just the guy in mind for the role of Irish Boston cop Joe O'Brien: Matt Damon.
"Matt, if you're reading this, call me," she says with a laugh.