LEFT NEGLECTED
LISA GENOVA
JULY 26, 2011
We never know what we have until it is gone. Sarah is an overachiever living a perfect life: a high-powered job, a home in an affluent community, a vacation home in Vermont, 3 children and a loving husband. Time is the only missing element. Sarah races to work with the ever present cell phone in her hand. The next thing Sarah remembers is waking up in a hospital bed.
The car crash results in a brain injury labeled “left neglect.” The left side of her body, the room, her dinner plate and the written page does not exist for Sarah. Sarah has to relearn the basics of everyday life. Help comes in the form of her estranged mother, Charlie her son with ADD, and her husband Bob. Sarah’s mom had been absent from Sarah’s life since she was a child. Sarah’s brother drowned as a young boy and her mother retreated into depression. Her mother steps up and becomes a doting grandmother and the mother Sarah always needed. Charlie shares homework and snowboarding with Sarah. Bob is a patient, loving husband and shares it all. A scene in a restaurant’s ladies room will bring the reader to laughter and tears.
Lisa Genova draws on her background from her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard to bring the reader into the mysterious world of the brain. She weaves each character together through each triumph in Sarah’s journey into an exquisite tapestry.
slh
7/26/11