Rating: 
Summary: Bewildering, Frustrating and Heartbreaking
Review: I was not aware the anniversary of Andrea Yates's horrific crime was near when I started this book. I had tried to stay away from the story. The subject of a mother killing all five of her children was just too difficult. I leafed through the book one day, and found I could not put it down. While the all too familiar story of the killings, the subsequent revelations of Andrea's mental illness, her husband Rusty's seeming inability and unwillingness to recognize the signs and to render aid to his struggling wife,the role religion seemed to play in the mix...I guess I wondered if there was that "something". That fact or truth that would make it all seem to make sense. There is no such revelation. As you read
the story you are almost compelled to yell at the main characters, "Wake up"! The only real "new" insight is in the portion of the book dealing with Michael Woroniecki, the itinerant preacher who influenced Rusty Yates and later Andrea Yates. He casts blame towards Rusty,calling him arrogant, unwilling to bow to God's plan. Woroniecki is more concerned with the continuation of hiswork and his word,then to pause for a moment to see what role,if any,he and his expectations may have played in this tragedy.
Now we read in the papers that Rusty has filed for divorce, seeking to have more children. He says cannot remain married to Andrea because he cannot "trust" her with children". Huh? And Andrea slips in and out of reality,each time she becomes more in tune with reality she must recognize her children are gone, and she had a hand in their deaths.
Suzanne O'Malley skillfully, and compassionately writes about this tragedy. There are no winners,only the grim reality of missed chances to recognize the crisis, to aid, to step in and to perhaps change the horror. No matter how skillfully written, this books left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I could only see those five smiling faces.
Rating: 
Summary: a theory of the Yates murders
Review: Suzanne O'Malley has a thesis to present: That Andrea Yates, convicted of drowning her five children in their bathtub, was improperly diagnosed. O'Malley sees Yates as a classic victim of bipolar disorder, rather than the "extreme" postpartum depression for which she was being treated.
This book, exhaustively detailed and written in sometimes casual, conversational language, will keep you turning pages. When you finish you may decide that O'Malley's ideas are correct. The case she makes is not entirely convincing; many aspects of this tragedy remain mysterious. For readers who have been hungry for more details about the Yates family, their marriage, their devotion to a small eccentric cult, Andrea's homeschooling of her children, and other matters, O'Malley's book will feed that curiosity from her own perspective and conclusions.
Rating: 
Summary: Good vs. Evil
Review: "Suzanne O'Malley has taken some large themes-grief, guilt, family attachments, not to mention the power of Satan and the consequences of over medication-and dealt with them compellingly. Most remarkable is O'Malley's insight into the human capacity for extremes violence, tenderness, love and hate. "Are You There Alone?" is a real page turner."--Patricia Bosworth, author Montgomery Clift, A Biography
Rating:
Summary: A Spellbinding Read
Review: "Suzanne O'Malley's reportage is stunning for its depth, its persistence, and its compassion. 'Are You There Alone' comes remarkably close to explaining the forces that resulted in an all-but-inexplicable crime. It's a spellbinding read." --John Berendt
Author, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Rating:
Summary: Are you there alone? by Suzanne O'Malley
Review: A true story exceptionally well written. Many kudos for Suzanne O'Malley for her courage of putting Andrea Yates tragic story on paper. The amount of investigative research and just plain leg work that went into this book along with Miss O'Malley's compassion for Andrea gives me hope that there are still some people out there who care. If there were more people of O'Malley's caliber possibly Andrea would be home taking care of her beautiful five babies, taking her medicine and coping with every day life. Gunta Krasts Voutyras
Rating:
Summary: Are you there alone? by Suzanne O'Malley
Review: A true story exceptionally well written. Many kudos for Suzanne O'Malley for her courage of putting Andrea Yates tragic story on paper. The amount of investigative research and just plain leg work that went into this book along with Miss O'Malley's compassion for Andrea gives me hope that there are still some people out there who care. If there were more people of O'Malley's caliber possibly Andrea would be home taking care of her beautiful five babies, taking her medicine and coping with every day life. Gunta Krasts Voutyras
Rating:
Summary: Troubling look at Yates case
Review: An intimate portrait of the disintegration of Andrea Yates leading up to the murder of her five children, if I had one complaint about this book it would be that it fails to take a long, hard and critical look at Rusty Yates.
Eloquently portraying Andrea's long history of mental illness, O'Malley gives the reader a tightly-written accounting of Andrea's continual mis-diagnoses and the disturbing tendency of her family to turn a blind eye to her obvious distress. Adding to the pressures of a diffident and immature spouse were religious fanatics who I sincerely hope are suffering some consequences for the things they said, saw and encouraged Andrea to do.
O'Malley obviously came to know the Yates family fairly well, Rusty in particular. While she does talk about some of his shortcomings, she loses her objectivity and fails to hold him as accountable as she does many of the other people involved, including Andrea's doctors and a medical system that was not equipped to manage her mental health care properly. Rusty is portrayed as a sort of bumbling victim himself, always trying to do the right thing but always falling short in an innocent way. A very large part of the book is dedicated to telling Andrea's story and describing what was happening around her at various stress points in her life, but in essentially choosing Rusty's side and perspective, O'Malley fails to capture any real emotional sense of Andrea's illness and its effect on her.
This isn't a lurid account of the crime itself, but more of a study of most of the people, behaviors and systemic failures that contributed to Andrea Yates' eventual collapse and the murder of her children. It's not an easy book to read, more because of its content than any problems with the writing itself. I encourage anyone seeking a rounder picture of the Yates' marriage to read this; the general media has never done such an in-depth look at all of the contributing factors.
Sadly for Andrea, the moderately hopeful note the book ends on, with her correct diagnosis and medication, has apparently not continued. As of a couple of weeks before this review was written, Rusty had filed for divorce and Andrea was hospitalized because she had stopped eating in prison, her mental illness reportedly uncontrolled again.
Rating:
Summary: But for the grace of God
Review: Any psychiatrist reading this book must half hope to come upon evidence of some obvious malpractice, so as to be able to say "such a thing could never happen to one of my patients" rather than "there but for the grace of God go I."
Some of the professional errors O'Malley describes are defendable. Experts may reasonably differ, as did some of the experts she talked to, about whether the case was one of bipolar disorder or of schizophrenia. Treating a bipolar patient with anti-depressants alone is often stated to be undesirable because of the danger of precipitating mania, but the practice has its advocates. O'Malley does not make Dr Saeed sound like an empathetic character with good verbal skills but that may be a subjective judgment.
She skates over the decision by the Yates's to have a fifth child. Rusty Yates has been much criticized for this. Dr. Starbranch made a written note that a further pregnancy would guarantee another psychotic episode but we do not know what she said to Rusty Yates about it.
I cannot imagine tolerating the practices she describes at Devereux. Of course O'Malley's description is based on a a written record that may not have reflected all of what went on. The chart and treatment plan would normally have been reviewed by Magellan. In any inpatient facility I have known there would have been extended and worried discussions, involving social workers and nursing staff, about the fact that there were five small children at risk. On the other hand it is possible that even with such discussions the staff migh have been reassured by the fact that the husband was supportive and a grandmother was arriving who would be in the house while he was at work. (The killings took place between the time Rusty Yates left for work and the time Dora Yates was due to arrive in the morning.)
I do not feel qualified to cast the first stone.
Rating:
Summary: But for the grace of God
Review: Any psychiatrist reading this book must half hope to come upon evidence of some obvious malpractice, so as to be able to say "such a thing could never happen to one of my patients" rather than "there but for the grace of God go I."
Some of the professional errors O'Malley describes are defendable. Experts may reasonably differ, as did some of the experts she talked to, about whether the case was one of bipolar disorder or of schizophrenia. Treating a bipolar patient with anti-depressants alone is often stated to be undesirable because of the danger of precipitating mania, but the practice has its advocates. O'Malley does not make Dr Saeed sound like an empathetic character with good verbal skills but that may be a subjective judgment.
She skates over the decision by the Yates's to have a fifth child. Rusty Yates has been much criticized for this. Dr. Starbranch made a written note that a further pregnancy would guarantee another psychotic episode but we do not know what she said to Rusty Yates about it.
I cannot imagine tolerating the practices she describes at Devereux. Of course O'Malley's description is based on a a written record that may not have reflected all of what went on. The chart and treatment plan would normally have been reviewed by Magellan. In any inpatient facility I have known there would have been extended and worried discussions, involving social workers and nursing staff, about the fact that there were five small children at risk. On the other hand it is possible that even with such discussions the staff migh have been reassured by the fact that the husband was supportive and a grandmother was arriving who would be in the house while he was at work. (The killings took place between the time Rusty Yates left for work and the time Dora Yates was due to arrive in the morning.)
I do not feel qualified to cast the first stone.
Rating:
Summary: An Important Book
Review: Are You There Alone? is an important book. Suzanne O'Malley has written a page-turner that not only is an excellent journalistic account of the tragedy and trial of Andrea Yates, but she has also shown that proper phsychiatric care could probably have prevented the tragedy. The great value of this book is that it doesn't just give the facts about the tragedy, but it informs readers how they can take action to try to prevent similar future tragedies. Few books in the past about murderers (In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song) have given such insight and given such good information about how to become involved. Read the book and get involved.
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