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A review by joywilcox
Leave Me by Gayle Forman
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This book........
This book goes over so many things i am sure most wives and moms have felt. Towards the back of the book the author has a note that says what we fight about when we fight about laundry. It says it's never really about the laundry it's actually a trojan horse hiding all the messy stuff inside. When we take the time to excavate that messy stuff and not only cleans the air it Alters the other fight and allows us to approach the difficult task of family job sharing and parenting with less resentment and more pragmatism. That in turn allows us to take care of ourselves without feeling quite so guilty about it. So in the story the main character ends up being a 40-something-year-old woman who ends up having a heart attack. She goes in the puncture and artery, she has this major surgery and then has recover when she gets home it's almost like her husband is determined a week is enough he goes back to work her kids are doing all the things and she has 24 year olds and it is just anxiety ridden. She's not in a spot where she can take care of herself and yet she has to do all of the things for all of the people all of the time. And it breaks down this really big wall of Need for self-care. But what she does is she runs away. And the author says that when she initially wrote the book, it was a Revenge fantasy. Like most moms and why she knows including herself or being overworked and things like that and not appreciated and so she developed this character. Well then the character ends up determining like all these different pieces of her life and all these other aspects but it's a little weird without the book ends because I feel like there was such this big wrap up but yeah at the same time it was kind of like oh so now all of a sudden there's just a resolution when we all know that when she gets home there's really not going to be a resolution. There's going to be more of a deep conversation and maybe some resentment from her husband about why did you leave, even though she asks him the same question about why they broke up from high school to college. So I think there are multiple ways to look at the aspects of this book and I think it was well written. But I think what sticks with me the most is the theme behind it and that natural construct of feeling like we have to do it all and never letting anybody help us then when we actually need the help we don't know how to ask for it and people don't know how to help us.