So Much for That A Novel

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the down side: It is agonizingly slow at some point with a too much hardship piled up. A little contrived to expose the system. The main character is irritatingly nice and submissive. But each character's monologue is captivating and you get caught up in the story, the people. And - SPOILERS - it rewards you with a almost Hollywood ending. And I mean "rewards", you really need it after getting through 500 pages of misery!

It took a while to decide what I thought of this book, but eventually came up with the four stars since I keep TALKING about this book. While the Lionel Shriver of my youth was a fluffy writer, her first book, The Female of the Species one of my favorites - I still love the scenes of the the anthropologist and the explorer talking in big words in front of the natives since they understood too much English otherwise, the Lionel Shriver of the last decade is much more serious and has a lot to say about the state of the world today. She is also, therefore, much harder to read, because of the seriousness of her content. We Need to Talk about Kevin, the tale of a mother trying to come to terms with the fact that her son is a Colombine style school-shooter, still haunts me several years after reading it and I think this one will do the same, leave me with things to think about and talk about for years. This is why it gets four stars even though it wasn't always the easiest read. This is the story of cancer, and dying, and lost dreams. Shep is about to fulfill a lifelong dream when his wife declares that she has cancer. The rest of the book is about her dying, his forgoing and losing his dream in the vain hope of her not dying, and both finally coming to terms with life as they know it now. It touches on our general fear of sick people and our difficulties knowing how to interact with them, and therefore avoiding them when they need us most. It touches on the problems in the health care system where you can go broke trying to live and therefore may be forced to put a price on health or living, even while being condemned for doing so, for being so crass and callous. It makes the point, quite splendidly, that life just isn't fair. Overall, while I didn't always enjoy reading this book (after having several family members and friends die of cancer and having one going through the process of cancer right now) I did appreciate what the book had to say and it has led me into several discussions already about choices that we make. When do you call it quits on treatment and why? Is it ok to at all? How do you love someone who is dying? I keep finding myself telling others about the book and discussing the issues it brought up for me. And that's what makes a good book, one that makes you think. And besides that, the ending was very satisfying. While other parts were slow, the last hundred pages or so flew by.