So Lucky

Mara has a great life. She's in a relationship and they live in a cute condo. Her job with a large AIDS non-profit gives her recognition and challenges and she's passionate about martial arts. Then, in a few days, it all collapses. Her partner leaves her for another woman and then she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), an unpredictable and disabling disease, which progresses rapidly, exhausting her, rendering her unable of continuing with the physical activity she loves. She loses her job and is quickly isolated, home alone, but also isolated by the distance that people put between themselves and the disabled.

In So Lucky, Nicola Griffith takes a strong, focused and self-focused woman and shows what becoming disabled does to a show more person. Mara is a fighter, and she's quick to turn her attention and experience to helping ms patients advocate for themselves by starting her own non-profit organization.

But this is not, despite the title, an inspiring book about a woman who overcomes odds or who learns acceptance. Mara is angry and her rage, which is open and uncontrolled, is an impressive thing. I'm used to men's rage. There are entire movie franchises and book series based on a man's rage at an injustice done to a woman he fancies, but here is a woman angry about what has happened to her and not about to sit home and suffer quietly. So Lucky not a comfortable book to read, nor is it a perfect book, but it is a worthwhile book. show less

An angry, raw, impassioned about life with MS, not just the debilitating disease, but the debilitating treatment of people slipped into the category of disabled. Fear and anger and frustration crowd the pages of this superbly written book. This is not an inspiring novel of bravery and acceptance. It's a rough, tough novel of self defense.

The recommendation I saw portrayed this novel as a "tense psychological thriller", but don't read it for that. Rather read it for the sense of what it might be like to be to have a chronic disease and be disabled. The feeling of helplessness and self-loathing and unimportance is well written along with the anger and desire to not be seen as a victim. The glimpse inside non-profits and fund-raising is interesting. Short book, well worth the time to encounter a different perspective.

A novella about grief and despair (what a relevant theme these days) but mostly about coming to terms with disability and illness after an MS diagnosis, it also manages to be the epitome of a taut psychological thriller in very little space. Astonishing, emotional, and unexpectedly compelling.

I listened to this audiobook, narrated by the author, while putting primer on the walls of my new study. I so wanted to love it. The author is self-identified queer, a Seattle-based writer, and the topic is one I care about: encroaching disability and the interpersonal and intrapersonal terrain involved in coming to terms with a serious debilitating illness. Griffith's voice is true, her passion is clear, the insights imbedded throughout are spot on. But as literature, this novel left me wanting.

Marra is an Executive Director of a non-profit in Atlanta, an independent soul with martial arts training. However, her wife has just left her and she is exploring a romantic attachment to the woman she thinks of as her best friend. It's not a show more good time in her life. And one night, as she tries to get some milk from the refrigerator, she falls and experiences the first episode leading to the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. Marra has an angry edge in any case, but her reaction to this new reality is understandably colored by rage, terror, and a bit of paranoia. Has the mailing list she created in association with a newly-founded non-profit established to help folks with disabilities been compromised? And is it being used by a gang of robbers and murderers to prey on the most helpless? Are they coming for her? There is an intriguing mystery built into the novel and for this I give Griffith a nod of appreciation.

I want to recommend it because I do think everyone -- everyone -- should learn from its lessons about persons with disability living in our society. It took fewer than five hours to listen and the narration is excellent. Got a room to which primer needs application? This served as a good distraction. show less

There was something about the writing here that I didn't find wholly convincing. Perhaps it was a little too autobiographical for fiction, a little too angry when it might have been better served by some dispassion. The off-screen murders and creeping sense that the narrator may be involved never really intrude... and yet... there is an urgency and a righteous anger and a fiery sense of self that comes from these pages. The loss of control that comes with illness. The loss of dignity and the look in other people's eyes, that's what works here and it is gut-wrenching. Not perfect by any stretch, but vital and worthy in all the right ways.

A novel that hits very close to where I am. A book that shows how life changing the diagnosis of a terrible disease can be, affecting all parts of a life. Mara, who works for a non profit, is dignosed with
MS, after an unexplained fall. Her emotions and her life are in free fall. She is angry, bitter and not easy to be around. The treatments make her ill, and are often worse than the disease. She needs to find a new way forward. It will not be easy.

It is at times hard to like Mara, her abrasiveness, bitterness can be off putting, but it is realistic and honest. I can relate since I too have MS as does the author. These are authentic feelings, and it takes a while to adjust to having a life altering disease that has very little in the way show more of effective treatment.
So hard for me at times but I knew what the book was about and was curious as to how it would be handled, written. This part was well done, often reading like a memoir.

I went down instead of up in my rating because of an element consisting of some horrfic crimes that were introduced relatively late in the book. While I understand what these crimes were meant to show, I felt that there was not enough of the book to build up the intensity, nor fully explore the subject. This part felt very rushed.

Definitely worth reading for it's realistic portrayal of a woman whose whole way of life as well of her sense of identity is in peril.

ARC from Netgalley. show less