Page Forty-Eight

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

This book can speak to most people today: the protagonist, Sarah Nickerson, has three children, a husband, a demanding 80-hour a week job, and tries to be everywhere and everyone all at once, 24-hours a day. Her intuition at the beginning of the book speaks to her through dream sequences and gives her many clues to make her realize she is burning the candle at both ends. Failing to heed the cautious voice in her head, Sarah - in another effort to multitask - ends up in a car accident while on her phone. She ends up with "Left Neglect" - a rare condition where she does not see or comprehend her left side, or anything that is left: the left side of a page, people standing to her left, the left side of a photo or picture, et cetera. Sarah is left to reevaluate her life and her role in it.

I had a feeling I wouldn't like this book when I realized the protagonist's three children were named after Peanuts characters. Right then and there (and this was only a chapter or so in) the book lost its lustre for me. I really, really wanted to like it after loving Still Alice, but this book failed to connect to me, which is odd as I have previously stated it would be easy for most readers to connect to. While I can appreciate Sarah's fast-paced life and the consequences it brings, I could not connect with or truly understand Left Neglect. It was too foreign for me to grasp. I also found this book didn't really go anywhere. While in Still Alice the disease got progressively worse, Sarah learns to better handle her Neglect, but it was an uninteresting and even slightly uninspiring journey for me.