A review of Left Neglected, Lisa Genova.

Lisa Genova is a scarily talented author. She not only writes wonderful novels, she also holds a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University.

She used this background and knowledge in her first novel, Still Alice, to explore issues of dementia from a clinical, scientific and personal perspective. It is cleverly written in the first person, taking the reader inside the mind of someone who is progressively getting confused and losing her sense of self.

Genova uses a similar technique for Left Neglected. This time she is exploring a rarer condition – Hemispatial or Left Neglect – that results from a traumatic brain injury or stroke, characterised by the brain ignoring everything on the left-hand side of the body.

Sarah is a successful career woman and mother of two children when she has a car accident and wakes up unable to see out of her left eye, or move her left hand or foot. It is not that the eye or limbs are unable to function, her brain is acting as if they don’t exist!

While the novel is about the ramifications of this slightly absurd condition, and some of the innovative rehabilitation techniques used to help Sarah reconnect with her left-hand side, it is much more about what happens when our busy lifestyles are unsustainable.

Like the recent movie, I don’t know how she does it, this book is a challenge to the pace and intensity of modern city lives. It especially challenges the dream of fulltime working parents with double mortgages. The same message is coming through a recent Australian report that claims 30% of Aussies work more than 45 hours a week, 61% of women and 47% of men feel they are rushed or pressured for time, 58% of workers say their health and personal life are affected by fatigue. These are real issues.

While most of us do not want to return to old gender differentiated roles, such as the stay-at-home Mum or the always at work Dad, the book affirms both parents finding a way of slowing everything down, focusing on the kids, building up the marriage, re-establishing external relationships, as well as making good use of our gifts and abilities through work.

Unfortunately for Sarah, it takes a life-threatening accident, a brain injury and slow rehabilitation, to learn that lesson.

Sarah also has to learn how to depend on others, something avoided in our egocentric society. We would rather pay someone to do the caring or cooking, than accept help or a meal.

In the process, Sarah discovers that gratitude is more important than attitude; and that forgiveness is a fundamental skill and gift to sustain interdependent relationships.

However, forgiveness does not come easily, as is revealed in this illuminating reflection:

My mother’s cure for a lifetime of regret lies within the words, ‘I forgive you,’ spoken only by me. I intuitively know this, but some part of me, old and wounded and needing a miracle cure of its own, resists this generosity and won’t allow the words to leave my head. And even then, before they can be spoken, they’d have to make the long journey from my head to my heart if they’re to earn the sincerity they need to be effective.

Sarah whispers prayers to God through her ordeal, but there is little indication of a depth of faith, and she and her husband do not seem to have time for church in their busy lives. However, she acknowledges answered prayer as she seeks a way out of the increasingly desperate financial mess her family is in.

She is learning that it is possible to live a full life with less, materially, but she fails to explore the spiritual aspects of being whole.