Love Anthony

I've been regularly putting out Lisa Genova's last book, Left Neglected, as one of my staff picks. It's usually signed out by someone the very same day. And when I check it in, I put it right back out. I've been waiting for another book from Genova. (and so have lots of my patrons!)

Well the wait is over. Love Anthony releases today - and boy oh boy, was the wait worth it! Another absolutely fantastic read from this New York Times best selling author.

Genova sets her latest book in Nantucket. It's the story of two women, whose lives connect in a way they couldn't imagine.

Olivia has retreated to the island - she and her husband have separated after the death of their son autistic son Anthony. Olivia is struggling with her grief and is show more still trying to understand and give meaning to her son's short life.

"She scoured every self-help book, then every medical journal, every memoir, every blog, every online parent support network. She read Jenny McCarthy and the Bible. She read and hoped and prayed and believed in anything claiming help, rescue, reversal, salvation. Somebody somewhere must know something. Somebody must have the key that would unlock her son."

Another island resident, Beth, is also struggling. Her husband of fifteen years and father to her three daughters has been having an affair for the last year. They too have separated. With her life turned upside down, Beth is also looking for answers.

"But who is she? She's Jimmy's wife, and she's a mother. And if she gets divorced, if she's no longer Mrs. James Ellis, and she's only a mother, then is there less of her? She fears this and feels it already, physically, as if a surgeon has taken a scalpel to her abdomen and removed a whole and necessary part of her. Without Jimmy, she doesn't recognize herself. How can that be? Whom has she become?"

And what connects the two? Anthony. In a very unusual way.

Genova has an amazing way with words. Her portrayal of Beth and Olivia was so realistic, I could imagine myself curled on their couches, listening to them try to work through things. Olivia's journals were especially poignant. Genova's exploration of marriage, motherhood, love and loss is so authentic. The island setting sprang to life with her details. The description of Anthony's stones was palpable and I will never look at a smooth white stone at the beach quite the same.

Anthony's 'voice' was truly wonderful. Genova's exploration and imagining of a non verbal autistic child's thoughts was by turns heartbreaking and heartwarming. As Genova holds a PhD in neuroscience, I like to think that she's not too far from the truth. I think readers will view autism with new eyes and understanding after reading this book.

Some of the coincidences might seem a bit too serendipitous for some readers, but didn't detract from the story for me. For, it is a story - but on the other hand, who says such things couldn't happen?

Genova caught me from the opening chapters and held me rapt until I turned the last page. The final chapters had me reaching for the tissue box. And really, past that, as I thought about Love Anthony long after I finished.

This is one that will be on my staff picks for a quite a while. (until I replace it with the fourth book Genova is working on.) show less

I really enjoyed Still Alice, Lisa Genova's novel about a woman facing early onset Alzheimer's. Her next novel, Left Neglected, about a woman suffering from the neurological condition of left neglect was another good read. When I received Love Anthony in the mail as a part of my postal mailbox book club, I was quite pleased to read a third novel of hers, this one centered on non-verbal autism. There's so little we actually know for sure about how our wonderful, amazing brains work that Genova's insights into specific functioning and the people living with the conditions or results is interesting indeed. But unlike her previous two novels, this one didn't work as well for me at all.

Beth is a married mother of three whose world comes show more crashing down on her when she discovers a note in the mailbox telling her that her husband Jimmy is cheating on her. She kicks him out and has to start the process of healing and of adjusting to life as a single mom. Her questions about how they got to where they did and her grief and despair are palpable in her story. Slowly she discovers that she must find the self she hid away long ago before she can consider what the future might hold. One of the things that she allowed to fall by the wayside in her marriage and motherhood is her love of writing, something she determines to reclaim even as she continues going about her daily life as a year rounder on the island of Nantucket.

Olivia has just separated from her husband and moved to Nantucket to the vacation home they once shared. She is not only mourning the loss of her marriage but she is still deeply frozen in grief over the death of her non-verbal autistic eight year old son. Anthony suffered a subdural hematoma after falling during a seizure and his loss has left her with so many questions, foremost among them whether he knew she loved him if he himself didn't have words and what the meaning of his short life was. The extreme isolation of Nantucket in the winter turns out to be a perfect place for Olivia to escape from the sorrow of Anthony's loss and the sadness that caring for him exhausted she and David so much that they couldn't find their way back together in the shared wake of his death.

While these two story lines do eventually come together, getting there took altogether too much time. Initially the parallel seems to be the women's disintegrating marriages but there's really no similarity to them at all. Of course, there's also the prologue where Beth adds a round white rock to Anthony's line of white rocks on the beach years prior, meant to convey Beth's sympathy for this unknown and clearly unusual child and perhaps lays the groundwork for a later fantastical occurrence. The narrative jumps back and forth between Beth and Olivia, with Olivia's portions also containing reminiscences of life with Anthony. Beth's portions come to include pieces of the novel she starts to write, a novel from the perspective of an autistic boy. Neither Beth nor Olivia was really all that well fleshed out as characters and the jumps in time in the narrative compressed feelings, moving Olivia and Beth along their own timelines without giving any sense of the hard work they had to be doing. Olivia's sense of alienation and her sorrow over the end of her marriage is more examined than Beth's feelings about her marriage, perhaps because David is rarely present in the narrative while Jimmy, still living and working on Nantucket, is. And if Genova hadn't gone farther, it would have been an okay but not great book centered more on marriages and how they fall apart than on autism. Instead, she uses Beth's book to turn the focus entirely. Beth writing about a child with autism without any direct experience of such didn't bother me at all. That she could so easily capture such a child without any research at all did. And the twist offered to explain this was a bridge too far.

The parallels between the boy in Beth's book and Olivia's Anthony started small enough but soon ballooned into absurdity. That Beth was in actual fact channeling Anthony rather than writing a book of her own cheapened Beth's effort to re-connect with writing and with her former interests. In fact, it is clearly Anthony's book, not Beth's. Can she really be said to have started writing again if it is all because she is his conduit? I can certainly buy the idea that Anthony had an active internal voice and unexpressed (because of his non-verbalness) reasons for his outward actions but the passages in his voice felt contrived and inauthentic, reading more as if this is what the author hopes is true than as a true possibility. As if this isn't bad enough, the excerpted parts of Anthony's story are actually rather dull after a while and unlikely to be the kernel of a viable novel. The ending of the larger novel was a let down as well. Beth's sense that the words "you don't have the right ending yet" referred to more than just the novel was a trite about-face after all her measured thinking and hard fought conclusion about her marriage to Jimmy. Maybe getting back together with him was the "right ending" but it was too easy and too unexplained after all that went before it. Olivia's ending was equally easy and unearned. As for Anthony's final letter presented in the epilogue, call me heartless, but I felt manipulated rather than satisfied but maybe this was residual annoyance with what had gone before

Obviously this had major problems for me and I'm sorry for that because I wanted to be amazed. Maybe the problem was that Genova had to channel her most interesting character (Anthony) and his thoughts through another character rather than him telling his own story, all of his own story, through his perspective. Having Anthony dead for the entire narrative made it more obvious the toll it can take caring for a child like him, who needs so much that giving to a spouse and even keeping a sense of yourself, is wildly difficult, but it also meant far less of him, his thinking, and the daily life he led in a world not designed for him. The subject of autism is a fascinating one and I wish this had delivered on it so much more than I felt it did. On the other hand, there are many rave reviews of the book so you might want to discount my opinion entirely! show less

Love Anthony may be my favorite of all of Lisa Genova's books. I went through a list of her books and now I have read all of them. My brother is similar in many ways to Anthony. Anthony had epilepsy and my brother does not. My brother was non-verbal until the age of six. His word was refrigerator. He does not talk in sentences, but can answer questions with a "yes" or "no" if you are patient enough. He does initiate conversation. When we took him to eat at a fast food place. I was shocked that he said. "Ketchup please". He was 52 at the time.

Anthony has a minimal part in this book but I am very grateful for it and now I have a longing to connect with parents, brothers and sisters to share experiences. The way that he was in those few show more pages was true and so similar to my brother. My brother had the same reactions to when there was too much noise or too people.

The marital problems between Olivia and Dan were typical, my parents separated and eventually divorced. Olivia was very like my own mother. I would loved it if my my mother had lived long enough to read this book. The marital problems between Beth and Jimmy was very good for me to read. My first marriage also ended similarly.

I hope that anyone who has a child with autism reads this book. I bought this book myself to see how Lisa Genova portrayed autism. show less

This book was Amazing!! My first book by Lisa Genova, and will be reading the other two as soon as possible! I loved the author’s usage of words to describe each scene in detail, which puts you in the setting as if you were experiencing its first hand-- from the items in a room, the senses, feelings, touch – making it so real and powerful!

This was a poignant, powerful, and heartfelt story of two women--their paths crossing at a time with strength from each other without knowing it. Olivia, mother of an autistic son trying to make peace of her son’s brief life, and Beth a mother of three who has just found out her husband was cheating and how to deal with his unfaithfulness and move on or learn to trust again with unconditional show more love.

I loved the setting in Nantucket which is one of my favorites and the fact both women had a creative past and now seeking solitude. Beth a writer and Olivia a photographer and former editor-both having given up their passion and finding it once again through this special little boy which binds the two strangers together for a life lesson. The book club, the girlfriends, the reaching inside the mind and behavior of a child with autism is a lesson for all of us that sometimes it is OK to just “Be” and not doing.

I loved all parts of the book, the characters, and most of all- the epilogue which was so eloquently written! I look forward to reading more from Lisa Genova as she has just been added to my favorite author list! show less

I loved how Genova gave voice to a boy with non-verbal autism and that the voice felt authentic and true. I’ve never had to consider what it would be like to be unable to easily communicate my needs with those around me. Thus was a glimpse behind the curtain and it’s very eye-opening and heart warming to see the person inside. I also loved that the story conveyed the messiness of all relationships and how we all have to make our own way in the world.

Love Anthony is an interesting book. The title implies it's about a boy named Anthony who had autism and died at age eight. His mother, Olivia, comes to Nantucket to start over when Anthony's death also ends her marriage. Meanwhile, another woman living on the island, Beth, has to start over too, when she learns her husband is cheating on her with a local woman. Beth goes back to her first love, writing, inspired by a little boy with autism she observed on a Nantucket beach some years before.

You can probably figure who that little boy was. While I liked many things about this book, the premise that Beth could write so accurately about a child with autism without knowing anything about it was both unbelievable (I'm not much for the show more concept of channeling), and puzzling, as it lessened the importance of Beth returning to an earlier passion (was she writing or channeling?).

I didn't like this one as much as Lisa Genova's Still Alice or Inside the O'Briens. It works much better to have the afflicted person tell his/her own story about one's illness, but that's not really possible with autism. Still, it's obvious this neuroscientist author knows her stuff.

© Amanda Pape - 2017

[This book was borrowed from and returned to my local public library.] show less

Lisa Genova's degree in Biopsychology and Ph.D. in Neuroscience gives her a particular insight into neurological conditions and their effects. In Still Alice, Genova explores the tragedy of Alzheimer's from the sufferer's perspective, in Left Neglected the protagonist suffers a traumatic brain injury and has to rebuild her life. Love Anthony is, in the main, the story of a young boy with Autism.

Olivia has fled to Nantucket after the death of her son, Anthony, and the disintegration of her marriage to David. Diagnosed with non-verbal autism, their son required an enormous commitment of time and resources to make even the smallest developmental progress. With his death, Olivia is left with the desperate need to understand the trials of show more Anthony's short life.

It is through old journal entries Olivia is reading that we are given insight into the very challenging circumstances of raising a child with Autism, not only the day to day struggles but also the loss of the hopes and dreams most people harbour for their children. I was incredibly sympathetic to Olivia's grief and felt the author captured the poignancy of raising, and losing, her son very well. In the midst of the stressful merry go round of therapies and behavioural goals, and then his untimely death, Olivia could not see past the emotional anguish resulting from her son's condition. Her pain and frustration feels genuine and sheds light on the complicated nature of caring for a child with disabilities. It takes time spent alone on Nantucket, for Olivia to gain perspective and resurrect memories of joy and delight to counter those of frustration and sadness.

"There was more to Anthony's life than his death. And there was more to Anthony than his autism. So much more.."p252

Still Olivia is not satisfied, she wants to know Anthony's life had a purpose. Without answers she doesn't feel she can move on with her life.

When Beth's comfortable life with her husband and three daughters is shattered she is forced to reassess the person she has become. In order to reclaim her sense of self, Beth decides to begin writing again and is surprised to find herself crafting a story from the unique perspective of a young autistic boy.

Excerpts of Beth's novel in progress are shared in interleaving chapters, a window into the presumed thoughts of an autistic boy, and it soon becomes obvious that, in an otherworldly twist of fate, Beth is writing of Anthony. In some ways I liked this unusual plot element but overall I thought it weakened the story. Had it been Olivia writing in an effort to understand her son I would have been riveted, as it was I felt Beth and her problems were little more than a discordant distraction.

I really wanted to love this novel but in the end I feel quite torn. I love that Genova has promoted increased awareness of Autism and there are elements I think the author developed beautifully but others didn't quite work for me.

However, despite my criticism, I am inclined to concede to the effusive praise for this novel which comes from the many mothers of Autistic children who have thanked Genova for sharing her insight into the challenges of parenting an Autistic child and who have found comfort in the imagined perspective of Anthony. show less