Sick of cheesy 'chick-lit'? A new novel about brain injury revises the genre.
Left Neglected is a cautionary tale for any modern-day woman juggling career, kids and marriage. Its heroine, Sarah Nickerson, is a high-flying multi-tasker who crams every minute of her day full to bursting. You know the type - she's got three kids, two houses and an 80-hour-a-week job in human resources. Oh, and a husband she really must remember to have sex with.
But then her life comes crashing to a halt quite literally when she looks at her phone instead of the road one morning while driving to work. Waking in hospital, Sarah discovers she has a condition called Left Neglect. Her damaged brain refuses to pay attention to anything that's on her left - including her own hand - it simply no longer exists for her.
Unlikely as it may sound, this is a real-life condition. US author Lisa Genova has a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard, so she knows her stuff. But Genova's smart enough never to weigh this powerful human drama down with too much medical detail.
In fact, if anything, Left Neglected has a chick-lit feel to it - for instance, Sarah works out how many days she's been lying unconscious in hospital by checking her leg stubble.
Sarah's rehabilitation takes up a big chunk of the story. Stuck in a neuro unit, unable even to pull up her own trousers, she is dependent on nursing staff and, horror of horrors, the mother she's barely had a thing to do with for years - not since she was a child and her brother drowned in a neighbour's swimming pool, fracturing the family.
While the rehabilitation portion of the novel does go on a bit, the changing relationship between mother and daughter is beautifully drawn and Sarah's obscure condition is a rich source of plot possibilities.
In the end, this story is about all sorts of healing. The insights Sarah's disability brings cause her to take a fresh look at everything in her life. Her voice is vivid, entertaining and real - she's an easy character to relate to.
A fun novel about ending up brain-injured might sound oxymoronic, but truly this is it.
