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May 23, 2017susan_findlay rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
This is the third book I've read by Lisa Genova. I gave the other two 5 stars. This one hovers in the 3 to 3.5 star range. Objectively, it ought to be as good as Still Alice and Inside the O'Briens. The medical condition is a bit less tragic than early onset Alzheimers or Huntington's disease, but it still royally messed up the main character's life - and I don't really like to play the "whose tragedy is more tragic" game. This one's pretty darn awful. Also, I'd never heard of left neglect before, and I love learning about new things. So, intellectually, that's an advantage for this book. Emotionally, though, this book doesn't resonate the way that the other two do. It never made me cry. I don't need to cry to give a book 5 stars, but I feel like this book should have made me cry given the subject matter. If I put myself in the main character's shoes, I would be absolutely crushed to lose control over half my body, thereby losing my job and not even being able to look after my children. So, why didn't I put myself in her shoes? I *was* Alice when I was reading her story, but never once was I Sarah. The trouble started with the dream sequences at the beginning of the first six chapters. I think they were supposed to convince me that Sarah is really really busy and that that's taking its toll on her mentally, leaving her really really stressed. But mostly they annoyed me. They broke the flow of the story. They didn't make me sympathize with poor stressed out Sarah; they made me grumpy. They didn't really impart much useful information either; the only one that really helped me get to know Sarah was the one about her childhood; the rest were just random weird dreams - and "person who has random weird dreams" isn't a particularly unique character trait. I was very very happy to see that chapter seven started without an annoying dream sequence. Another thing that made it difficult to sympathize with Sarah was that her condition was not due to genetics beyond her control. It was her own damn fault. I don't question the validity of including the point that "this thing that a lot of people do is really stupid and can result in people getting really badly hurt", but it made it a bit harder to sympathize with the character. For most of the book, it also felt like that point was just going to be glossed over and ignored; I'm thankful that it was eventually revisited. Finally, it can be hard to relate to "oh no! how will we afford the mortgages on our very expensive home and our vacation ski lodge?". The eventual solution felt a little pat, and like it would only ever happen to people who lead totally charmed lives. Basically, if you were someone who sympathizes with Eponine rather than Cosette (for those who know Les Miserables), you may find it difficult to sympathize with Sarah. She has the same "tragic childhood, but her life has been pretty perfect for a long time" thing going for her that Cosette did. I think her son Charlie's ADD storyline was included to try and make her life feel less charmed, but it felt tacked on - and, frankly, it was his issue not hers. All this said, it's not a bad book. It was worth reading. It was interesting. But it would have been *so* much better without those annoying dream sequences (which, I think, predisposed me to be annoyed by the rest of my relatively minor grievances with the book).