Scan barcode
A review by mrsfligs
Love Anthony by Lisa Genova
3.0
I was blown away by Lisa Genova’s first novel, Still Alice, which provided readers with an “inside” look at Alzheimer’s from the point of view of the patient. In her next book, Left Neglected, Genova (a neuroscientist by training), explored the strange affliction known as Left Neglect, in which patients don’t “see” anything on the left side of their body. In Love Anthony, Genova tackles autism—providing a glimpse into the mind of an autistic young boy and highlighting some of the difficulties of being a parent to such a child. However, for the first time, Genova branches out and doesn’t focus the entire book on the medical condition she is spotlighting. This is both good and bad. In some ways, I was happy to see Genova spread her wings as a writer. The bad news is that I don’t think it entirely worked—although I found the sections on autism to be fascinating.
The set-up is this: Beth, a wife and mother of young girls living on Nantucket, finds out that her husband has been cheating on her. She kicks him out of the house and embarks on a major identity crisis. As she beings to explore who she “really” is if she isn’t just a wife and a mother, she starts writing again (an activity she gave up when she got married and had kids). As she begins writing a novel, she begins “channeling” the thoughts and experiences of an autistic boy named Anthony. In alternating chapters, we meet Olivia, a grieving mother whose son Anthony recently died and is in the process of separating from her husband. She has fled her home in Boston for her rental property in Nantucket. As she struggles to make sense of her son’s life and death (he was autistic and dealing with the stresses of his condition led to the break down of her marriage), she reads the journals she kept during Anthony’s life. In the end, these women are brought together (in a way that you might be able to predict) and find healing and answers to their individual issues.
This “woo woo” approach was a bit of risk, and I don’t think Genova pulls it off. Although I found the book to be an “easy” read, I was skeptical of how she was tying Beth and Olivia’s stories together. It seemed just a little too out there. Plus the book has a “chick lit” feel that does it a disservice. From the wacky colorful friends that Beth relies on to get her through her separation to Olivia’s too easy transition into a successful beach portrait photographer, everything seemed too pat and neat to feel believable. As I said, the sections that felt most real and were most riveting were the parts where Beth channels Anthony’s view of the world as an autistic boy. It is here (as it always is) that Genova shines and shows her strengths as a writer. Although I applaud Genova for stretching her wings as a novelist, this book just didn’t work for me as much as her previous ones. Still, if you’re looking for something that gives you a better sense of what it might feel like to live in the mind of an autistic person, this book would probably be of interest and value. And the ending was so lovely and moved me to tears, which bumped it up from 3 stars to 3.5 stars.
The set-up is this: Beth, a wife and mother of young girls living on Nantucket, finds out that her husband has been cheating on her. She kicks him out of the house and embarks on a major identity crisis. As she beings to explore who she “really” is if she isn’t just a wife and a mother, she starts writing again (an activity she gave up when she got married and had kids). As she begins writing a novel, she begins “channeling” the thoughts and experiences of an autistic boy named Anthony. In alternating chapters, we meet Olivia, a grieving mother whose son Anthony recently died and is in the process of separating from her husband. She has fled her home in Boston for her rental property in Nantucket. As she struggles to make sense of her son’s life and death (he was autistic and dealing with the stresses of his condition led to the break down of her marriage), she reads the journals she kept during Anthony’s life. In the end, these women are brought together (in a way that you might be able to predict) and find healing and answers to their individual issues.
This “woo woo” approach was a bit of risk, and I don’t think Genova pulls it off. Although I found the book to be an “easy” read, I was skeptical of how she was tying Beth and Olivia’s stories together. It seemed just a little too out there. Plus the book has a “chick lit” feel that does it a disservice. From the wacky colorful friends that Beth relies on to get her through her separation to Olivia’s too easy transition into a successful beach portrait photographer, everything seemed too pat and neat to feel believable. As I said, the sections that felt most real and were most riveting were the parts where Beth channels Anthony’s view of the world as an autistic boy. It is here (as it always is) that Genova shines and shows her strengths as a writer. Although I applaud Genova for stretching her wings as a novelist, this book just didn’t work for me as much as her previous ones. Still, if you’re looking for something that gives you a better sense of what it might feel like to live in the mind of an autistic person, this book would probably be of interest and value. And the ending was so lovely and moved me to tears, which bumped it up from 3 stars to 3.5 stars.