Love Anthony

Love Anthony
by Lisa Genova
CD Shelves - Main Level - GENOVA

(Also available in print.)

I love everything that Lisa Genova writes.  She is a
Harvard-educated neuroscientist, and her novels all have neuroscience connections. Her first novel, Still Alice was about Alzheimers disease and her second novel, Left Neglected was about a neurological condition known as left neglect.

Love Anthony is about autism.  There are a few overlapping story lines, but the main characters are Olivia, who is the mother of a recently-deceased autistic boy named Anthony, Anthony himself, and Beth.  Beth is writing a novel about an autistic boy...named Anthony.  Beth does not know anything about the real Anthony, but the story she writes is uncanny.  The manuscript falls into Olivia's hands when Beth asks her to edit it.  (Olivia was a book editor in the past.)  Olivia swears it is her Anthony, telling his story through Beth.  Beth's own family consists of three healthy, beautiful daughters and a husband from whom she is separated.  Her life forms a side story that is very subtly tied to Olivia's.  Olivia is also separated from her husband.

Genova does a great job of describing autism.  No one can know exactly what it's like to be a person with autism, but the character of Anthony is very believable.  Genova describes what outsiders see when they look at him, but even more touchingly describes what Anthony thinks of the world around him and how he copes with its disorder and noise.

This is a great choice for book clubs.  It is also recommended as a read alike to authors like Jodi Picoult, Elin Hilderbrand, and Amy Hatvany.  Anyone with ties to autism, as well as anyone who wants to know more about autism, will find great satisfaction in this novel.

Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key 
By Tatiana De Rosnay
CD Book Shelves - Main Level - De Rosnay

What a touching story this is!  In 1942, Jewish families were rounded up in Paris and sent to Auschwitz.  This is the story of Sarah Starzynski, a ten year old girl who escaped alone from the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup.  She had locked her little brother in a cabinet at home as they were ushered out by the police to hide him, thinking they would be back in a few hours, not understanding what was happening. When she escaped, she tried to get back to Paris to let her brother out of the cabinet.  The reader knows what that little girl doesn't, and it is absolutely heartbreaking.

Sarah's story is uncovered by a journalist, Julia Jarmond, fifty years later in 2002.  Julia finds that her family has a connection to Sarah's.  Julia's own story is also told in alternating chapters.   Her marriage is rocky, and she has to decide between her unborn baby and her husband - also heartbreaking and dramatic!

The audio book is read by Polly Stone.  She does a good job of differentiating characters by different voices (from small children to senior adults), and delivers an authentic French accent. I was glad to hear this book rather than read it because I know that her pronunciations were much better than my own would have been.

Highly recommended in all formats!

The Marriage Plot

The Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides

Adult Cd Book Eugenides


During her senior year of college, Madelaine Hanna, a lover of British
novels by Jane Austin and George Eliot, is embarking upon her senior
thesis on the marriage plot, a theme that runs through the works of these
writers. Then she takes a class in semiotics where she meets the
charismatic Leonard Bankhead. Beginning as an intellectual relationship,
it quickly becomes erotically charged and wildly unpredictable as
Leonard's manic depression cycles from mania to depression.



Throughout this relationship, her friend from freshman year, Mitchell
Grammaticus, like Eugenides from Detroit, resurfaces. He's been reading
Christian theology, saying his mantra, the Jesus prayer, over and over and
is planning a trip to India to work with Mother Theresa. Mitchell has been
madly in love with Madelaine since freshman year, but has never been able
to get anywhere with her, which has caused him a great deal of self
loathing.



With this love triangle, Eugenedes writes a marriage plot of our time that
has humor but long bouts of depression as Leonard tries to find his way
through his mental illness.



I listened to the audio book, performed ably by David Pittu. He did a
remarkable job with the many voices, only failing in pronouncing a few
foreign words. I highly recommend it.

In One Person

In One Person John Irving

Adult CD Book Irving


The early part of In One Person focuses largely on the amateur theater
productions of First Sister Playhouse for which Billy's mother is the
uptight, rigid prompter, his Grandpa Harry prefers to play women, and the
director, Harry's business partner is an hysterical Norwegian who
constantly gets his word order wrong and brings levity to a pretty heavy
book. There is also the theater at the Academy where Billy plays Ariel in
The Tempest, Ariel whose sexuality is mutable.



Following graduation, Billy leaves Vermont and goes on to college, travel,
explore his sexuality with gay men, transsexuals, and women. Perhaps it
bogs down a bit here, but as the 80s commence, the novel takes on a
deepening cast as friends and lovers start to get sick and die. Irving
goes into much detail about the ravages of AIDS, not wanting us to forget
what it was like.



Told from the point of view of a nearly 70 years old William Abbot, the
novelist, he will confront many ghosts from his past before the novel ends
and he will support the younger generation of GLBTQ teens that he comes to
teach. This is an extraordinary novel from one of my favorite novelists,
one that bears rereading.



I listened to the audiobook and found the narrator, John Benjamin Hickey,
quite good. I would have liked him to have more of a Vermont accent for
Grandpa and other family members, but he reserved accents for foreign
characters, which was okay and perhaps for the best.