Left Neglected

Left Neglected

by Lisa Genova

Genre: Fiction

Synopsis: Sarah Nickerson is like any other career-driven supermom in Welmont, the affluent Boston suburb where she leads a hectic but charmed life with her husband Bob, faithful nanny, and three children-Lucy, Charlie and nine-month-old Linus.

Between recruiting the best and brightest minds as a vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting; shuttling the kids to soccer, day care, and piano lessons; convincing her son's teacher that he may not, in fact have ADD; and making it home in time for dinner, it's a wonder this over-scheduled, over-achieving Harvard graduate has time to breathe.

A self-confessed balloon about to burst, Sarah miraculously manages every minute of her life like an air traffic controller.  Until one fateful day. while driving to work and trying to make a phone call, she looks away from the road for one second too long.  In the blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her jam-packed life come to a screeching halt.

A traumatic brain injury completely erases the left side of her world, and for once, Sarah must pay close attention to the details surrounding her, including her formerly absent mother.  Without an awareness of the food on the left side of her plate or even her own left hand, she is forced to search for answers in the void of this strange hemi-world-both about the past and her uncertain future.

Now, as she wills herself to regain her independence and heal, Sarah must learn that her real destiny-her new, true life-may lie far from the world of conference calls and spreadsheets.  And that a happiness and peace greater than all the success in the world is close within reach, if only she slows down long enough to notice.

from the book jacket

Review:  I found the concept of Left Neglect quite fascinating which is probably why I read this book pretty quickly and remained engaged.  At various times in the story I felt like I was reading a medical article about Sarah after her accident and not a fictional novel.  The story from the beginning to when Sarah is dismissed from the hospital was fairly flat and I found myself just waiting for Sarah to have the accident so that something would happen in the story and then while Sarah was in the hospital it was mainly description of her development.  Once Sarah left the hospital, the story between her and her mother picked up as well as her internal struggle.  I'm not sure why the various dreams (with the except of one of them) were included in the story and two of them were just plain weird.  I think I would have liked this book much more if it had been a memoir about someone who had Left Neglect.

Rating: 3 1/2 stars