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prolificliving 's review for:
Me Before You
by Jojo Moyes
Friendly warning: My review may contain spoilers so beware if you haven't read the book and are sensitive to such things.
I read After You before its prequel, Me before You, and while I wish I had read them in the right order, I gained an interesting perspective reading them in reverse. This was the third book in the last month that I have read by Jojo Moyes, and it's my least favorite and I still loved it. The Girl You Left Behind is my true favorite and After You my second favorite, even though I was so fed up with Lily, the spoiled little brat, but alas, annoying characters are part of a great story.
I was far more attuned to the audio version and the reader's voice in After You that it took me a few hours into the book to warm up to this female version of Louisa Clarke, but warm up I did, and I stayed up late, laying on the carpet, stretching my limbs and listening to the final hours of the story of Louisa Clarke and Will Trainer. It was truly a lovely story, even if you had to tolerate way too much of Patrick (aka, running man! yikes!) and too little of the love story between Louisa and Will - it really didn't come into play until the latter part of the book, and it ended almost before it started.
Jojo Moyes grapples with some complex themes, the biggest one the choice of self-assisted suicides for those terminally ill and suffering, and whether this is something their families and loved ones and the right 'authorities' should allow or deny. I learned quite a bit about the limited life of quadriplegics and admired Louisa's determination to help Will find a thread of hope in the living side. And yet I couldn't help but see Will's side of life in this way versus life the way he had known it, and despite the love that had grown in his heart, he couldn't bear the thought of living this way. Dying looked more appealing than living in his condition, and that made this book a terribly sad story to read.
I wasn't crazy about the break in the choice of narrators especially since NONE of them included Will. One chapter was by Trina the sister, another by Nathan the medical care provider and another by Mrs. Trainer and yet another by Mr. Trainer, but mainly we saw the world through third-person limited view of Louisa Clark, but this did afford you the 360 view into the tragic lives of those affected by such awful twists in fate.
Overall, I LOVE love LOVE this author. Jojo Moyes is funny, smart, both heart-wrenching and heart-warming, and draws up characters and circumstances and lives so real that you feel you are there with them, watching them go through their conflict and triumphs and being as real as your own breathing! Plus I'm now into my modern English female novelists phase, so I'll be reading more of her work.
What would you do if you were a 35-year old most successful, admirable, adventurous, physical, wealthy and life-hungry person and an accident took all that away from you, leaving you at the mercy and burden of others to take care of you, to see to your every need and to go through hell with you. What if you knew that not only you won't be getting better, but you will actually be getting worse, with frequent bouts of pneumonia and various infections, and a very good chance of some bacteria or virus taking over at anytime and declaring you finished. Just like that.
Maybe a part of you might choose a dignified way of dying, on your terms, on your chosen day and hour, with all who love you surrounding you.
This is a book that shows us to respect the choice and decisions of those who are most affected by their own affliction, and to honor the choice of life or death, whatever their wish may be, even if our own selfish desires would rather see the suffering person among the living. It's a vastly complex and yet simple theme and Jojo Moyes does a brilliant job of exploring it to its very core.
I read After You before its prequel, Me before You, and while I wish I had read them in the right order, I gained an interesting perspective reading them in reverse. This was the third book in the last month that I have read by Jojo Moyes, and it's my least favorite and I still loved it. The Girl You Left Behind is my true favorite and After You my second favorite, even though I was so fed up with Lily, the spoiled little brat, but alas, annoying characters are part of a great story.
I was far more attuned to the audio version and the reader's voice in After You that it took me a few hours into the book to warm up to this female version of Louisa Clarke, but warm up I did, and I stayed up late, laying on the carpet, stretching my limbs and listening to the final hours of the story of Louisa Clarke and Will Trainer. It was truly a lovely story, even if you had to tolerate way too much of Patrick (aka, running man! yikes!) and too little of the love story between Louisa and Will - it really didn't come into play until the latter part of the book, and it ended almost before it started.
Jojo Moyes grapples with some complex themes, the biggest one the choice of self-assisted suicides for those terminally ill and suffering, and whether this is something their families and loved ones and the right 'authorities' should allow or deny. I learned quite a bit about the limited life of quadriplegics and admired Louisa's determination to help Will find a thread of hope in the living side. And yet I couldn't help but see Will's side of life in this way versus life the way he had known it, and despite the love that had grown in his heart, he couldn't bear the thought of living this way. Dying looked more appealing than living in his condition, and that made this book a terribly sad story to read.
I wasn't crazy about the break in the choice of narrators especially since NONE of them included Will. One chapter was by Trina the sister, another by Nathan the medical care provider and another by Mrs. Trainer and yet another by Mr. Trainer, but mainly we saw the world through third-person limited view of Louisa Clark, but this did afford you the 360 view into the tragic lives of those affected by such awful twists in fate.
Overall, I LOVE love LOVE this author. Jojo Moyes is funny, smart, both heart-wrenching and heart-warming, and draws up characters and circumstances and lives so real that you feel you are there with them, watching them go through their conflict and triumphs and being as real as your own breathing! Plus I'm now into my modern English female novelists phase, so I'll be reading more of her work.
What would you do if you were a 35-year old most successful, admirable, adventurous, physical, wealthy and life-hungry person and an accident took all that away from you, leaving you at the mercy and burden of others to take care of you, to see to your every need and to go through hell with you. What if you knew that not only you won't be getting better, but you will actually be getting worse, with frequent bouts of pneumonia and various infections, and a very good chance of some bacteria or virus taking over at anytime and declaring you finished. Just like that.
Maybe a part of you might choose a dignified way of dying, on your terms, on your chosen day and hour, with all who love you surrounding you.
This is a book that shows us to respect the choice and decisions of those who are most affected by their own affliction, and to honor the choice of life or death, whatever their wish may be, even if our own selfish desires would rather see the suffering person among the living. It's a vastly complex and yet simple theme and Jojo Moyes does a brilliant job of exploring it to its very core.