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.

Page Forty-Six and Forty-Seven

Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Finishing off The Hunger Games trilogy was an easy task, as the books are super fast reads and Collins does that masterful trick of giving the reader a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter, thus prompting one to keep reading. Catching Fire was not a favourite of mine - seemed to have too much of the same concept as the first, but without being as well executed. The first book was definately the favourite, but Mockingjay was engaging enough with some surprising twists and ended in a way that left me fairly satisfied. Overall, can definately see why young adults love these books. Very recommended for reluctant readers!

Page Forty-Five

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

It is 1984 in Dahanu, India and Kavita Merchant gives birth to a girl, Usha. Kavita will do anything to save her second daughter from a culture who favours sons, so she and her sister leave the child at Shanti Orphanage in Bombay. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Somer and her Indian-born husband Krishnan realize that Somer will never be able to bear a child of her own. Somer allows herself to be convinced to adopt a child in India, and eventually the two adopt Kavita's child, now almost one years old and mistakenly named Asha. The author takes the reader through the next 25 years, alternating between the voices of Somer, Krishnan, Asha, Kavita, and Jasu. The adoption affects each person differently and distinctly, and the author explores topics such as motherhood, marriage, family, and identity.

This was a good read, but for some reason I found the book dragged on at times.

Page Forty-Four

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Two children, one boy and one girl, between the ages of 12-18 must be selected from each District in this futuristic country of Panem, which used to be North America, to participate in the annual Hunger Games. There can only be one winner. The tributes must hunt and forage to stay alive, and try to survive the elements, illness, injury, and each other. The Games are televised to the entire country, and bets are placed as to who will win.

Katniss Everdeen has volunteered to take the place of the only person she loves: her 12-year old sister, Prim. Coming from District 12, an area that is poor and ill-equipped, there is not much hope for her success, but her early heroism in saving her sister, her stylist team that pegs her as someone to watch out for during the Games, and her fellow Tribute from the District, Peeta Mellark, who convinces the audience and the Gamemakers that they are in love, quickly increases her status and lines up a number of sponsers.

Once the Games begin, Katniss must rely on her knowledge of hunting and her instincts in order to survive the brutal conditions that surround her, as well as manage to evade those who want her dead. For much of the book she struggles as to whether or not she can trust Peeta, and ultimately learns much about love and sacrifice.

This young-adult book was a very quick read, compelling, though annoying in how ignorant Katniss is to Peeta's obvious love for her. It ended in a way that almost forces you to read the next book in the trilogy, and I'm sure the second book would do the same.

Page Forty-Three

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

In this post-apocalyptic novel, a man and his young son are traveling across burned America in order to find the coast. What they will find there is uncertain. Their priority is to keep alive amid starvation, the "bad guys," cannibalism, freezing temperatures, sickness, waning hope and faith, and the temptation of suicide, symbolized by the ever-present pistol the man carries. Everything is reduced to its most basic form, including the dialogue between the two and the stylistic elements the author uses. Page after page they travel the road, with only eachother and the love they have for one another, and the "fire" they carry. The reader is kept interested by waiting to see if perhaps some Godly intervention will occur when they are finally able to get to the coast, but the anti-climactic event simply reinforces the wasteland that surrounds them.

At times touching, particularly the boy whose concern for goodness is heartwrenching, at other times harrowing, with its description of what people have been reduced to, the book overall was a typical dystopian novel: depressing. However, it does leave readers with a glimmer of hope in the form of the boy who must carry on, carry the fire, and fight to find a reason to continue amid a bleak and destroyed world.

Page Forty-Two

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Another book where I saw the movie first. While I think that was definately a mistake, it did help make sense of the book for me. However, I kept comparing it to the movie, which I loved, and felt I could have appreciated the book more had I not seen the film first.

The concept is very intriguing. A number of children are growing up at Hailsham, a seeming boarding-school in England. The children are told yet not told, know yet don't know, what their purpose in life is: to become donors until eventually they "complete." Cut off from society, fed half-truths, and raised to eliminate death in the world, none of these children fully understand how their lives have been one big lie.

Kathy H. narrates the story and looks back on her life at Hailsham, her complex relationship with friends and schoolmates Ruth and Tommy, and brings us into her current life of being a carer. She and Tommy eventually find the romance that had been hinted at throughout the novel, even during Tommy and Ruth's lengthy relationship, but realize their quest for a "deferral" in order to live as 'normal' human beings for a few years before returning as donors, is ultimately futile. Upon finding Miss Emily, the headmistress at Hailsham, she informs them deferrals do no exist and to think of themselves lucky to have been raised at Hailsham -many other 'institutions' of its kind were not as humane. Kathy H. has spent the whole book revealing the humanity and emotions of herself and others who grew up at Hailsham, and at the end we realize society has rejected this group of people and simply uses them as a means to an end.

A very engaging read, and an excellent and emotional film version.

Page Forty-One

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

I both liked this book and did not like this book. The story is fairly intriguing: a 4-year girl found after a boat docks in Australia is taken in by a loving couple and raised as their own, until she is told in her late teens that she is not their biological child. The girl, now named Nell, attempts to piece together her past, which leads her to the mysterious Blackhurst Manor in England. Contributing to the search after her death is her granddaughter, Cassandra.

The story is indeed a mystery, but there are so many voices in the text at times it became a bit frustrating: Nell, Cassandra, and Eliza are the three main narrators, but thrown in are also Rose, Adeline, Eliza, Luis (whose role in the story was oddly developed), Nathaniel ... and I am likely missing one or two characters. The ending was fairly predicatable and Morton's playing off of well known fairytales and children's stories, such as The Secret Garden - even including Frances Hodgson Burnett as a character where it is implied she used the garden at Blackhurst Manor to inspire what would become The Secret Garden - was almost annoying, though I could see this would appeal to many readers.

Overall, however, a good escapist read for the summer.