Rating: ****
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary, Psychological Fiction, Psychological, Contemporary Women, Humor, Medical, Patients, Life Change Events, Brain - Wounds and Injuries - Patients, Psychological Fiction; American, Brain, Self-Realization in Women, Wounds and Injuries, Lang:en
Summary
Sarah Nickerson, like any other working mom, is busy trying
to have it all. One morning while racing to work and distracted
by her cell phone, she looks away from the road for one second
too long. In that blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts
of her over-scheduled life come to a screeching halt. After a
brain injury steals her awareness of everything on her left
side, Sarah must retrain her mind to perceive the world as a
whole. In so doing, she also learns how to pay attention to the
people and parts of her life that matter most. In this powerful and poignant
New York Times bestseller, Lisa Genova explores what
can happen when we are forced to change our perception of
everything around us.
Left Neglected is an unforgettable story about finding
abundance in the most difficult of circumstances, learning to
pay attention to the details, and nourishing what truly
matters. In neuroscientist Genova's second novel (after Still Alice),
a car crash gives a successful younger woman an obscure
neurological syndrome called Left Neglect. Upwardly mobile
Sarah and Bob Nickerson live in suburban Massachusetts with
their three small children. Both work 60-hour weeks, though the
economic downturn looms. When Sarah wakes up eight days after
crashing her car on the way to work, the doctors inform her of
her condition, which causes her brain to ignore the left side
of everything, and she begins a long and uncertain recovery.
Genova vividly describes Sarah's fear and frustration about a
recovery that may never come, turning her struggle into a
lesson in forgiveness, acceptance, and adaptability; insights
reveal themselves with extreme clarity, and small moments
between Bob and Sarah illustrate his stalwart love, though
readers may want a more thorough investigation of his growing
role as caretaker, and as a character. More accessible than her
somber first book, which dealt with early-onset Alzheimer's,
the central condition causes readers to wonder what brain
disease she will think of next. (Jan.)
First-person narrator Sarah Nickerson is a 37-year-old,
overachieving multitasker with a Harvard MBA and a demanding
job as vice president of human relations at a Boston consulting
firm. Her husband, Bob, works at a struggling tech start-up and
shares in the upbringing of their three young children in an
affluent suburb. Then there’s a car accident on a rainy
November morning, and a traumatic brain injury leaves Sarah
with “left neglect,” a lack of awareness of
anything to her left, including the left side of her own body.
The one person who can help when insurance runs out is
Sarah’s mother, Helen, yet their relationship has been
rocky ever since Helen was a virtually absentee mother for
Sarah after Sarah’s brother, Nate, died in childhood. As
Sarah’s struggles parallel those of her 7-year-old son,
Charlie, just diagnosed with ADHD, there is healing of body,
mind, and mother-daughter relationship and acceptance that
“normal is overrated.” Neuroscientist Genova (Still
Alice, 2009) once again personalizes an actual disabling brain
condition to create irresistibly readable and moving fiction.
--Michele LeberFrom Publishers Weekly
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