"Left Neglected" by Lisa Genova

I picked up 'Left Neglected' at my library on a whim, and I'm very glad that I did. This is the story of a driven, Type-A employee, wife, and mother, who is able to 'do it all', keeping multiple very expensive, very fragile balls in the air by barely breathing. An accident that injures part of her brain forces her to slow down and reevaluate what is really important to her in her life.

Sounds pretty standard, right? A few pages in, I was preparing for the eyerolling to begin, expecting another 'bad wife/mother discovers her real place is in the home' novel, and to some extent that is what lies here. The difference is that this wife/mother clearly loves her family AND clearly loves being intellectually stimulated, and finds a balance between the two; that rarely occurs in modern 'women's lit' novels. Why we continue to try to 'one way or another' ourselves is beyond me, but that's a whole other bucket of worms that I don't intend to dump out here.

The bulk of the novel concerns Sarah's journey to her 'new normal', and the steps of denial and regret and acceptance that get her there. I'd never heard of left neglect, a condition where the affected person 'forgets' there is a left side of anything, and frankly it's frightening to contemplate trying to cope with that. I really liked that she seems so 'normal'--I can't count the women I know that do the balancing act she does, every day. Unlike many other books like this, she has a strong bond with her children and with her husband, and she is making everything work when catastrophe strikes; there's no 'her life was falling apart anyway' melodrama that I associate with women's lit. The dialogue is true to life, and the characters are believable (that's big for me).

On the negative side, the end was sort of pat, and some chapters felt clipped off instead of coming to a natural end (I'm seeing more and more of that lately, and it's troubling). The subplot with her mother felt a bit unnecessary (though I really liked the mother's character).

All in all, though, Genova has written a story with more strengths than flaws. Coming from a medical background as she does, it was gratifying to find description that was just enough for me as a reader to grasp without overwhelming me with detail. The story made me laugh often, tear up a little, and read it straight through. That right there is golden. Definitely something I'd recommend.