Books and Beans is a book discussion I host at a local coffee shop once a month. This is our second month doing this and this mornings discussion (with a great cup of coffee) was with the book Left Neglected by Lisa Genova.
If you have not read Lisa Genova, you are certainly missing out. Lisa is the author of Still Alice (which was also a movie), and Inside The O’Briens ; both of which I have read, as well as the author of Love Anthony and the soon to be released, Every Note Played. she is one of those authors that once you have read one of her books, you will more than likely be searching for another.
Today’s discussion was good. We had a great group of women who were highly engaged in discussing the novel. Left Neglected, the story of Sarah Nickerson, a highly driven business woman who while trying to squeeze in one more phone call while driving looks away from the road a second too long and her overfilled life suddenly comes to a halt. When Sarah awakens in the hospital she finds that she has had a traumatic brain injury, one that has left her without the use of the left side of her brain referred to as left neglect. Sarah finds that her once carefully scheduled to the minute world is now one she must release to the control of others while she struggles to rehabilitate herself in a whole new world.
We touched on some pretty important topics through our discussion. One of these topics was status and what drives people to the point of feeling they need that acceptance form the outside world to feel complete, useful. One of the ladies in the room said something that stuck with me. She said,
Status, relies on other people.
I had never really thought of it like that before. The discussion continued on that this need of acceptance/approval can stem back to childhood.
Another one that stuck with me was about the loss of a child.
Losing a child changes how you view the world.
This is also something that hit me. It’s true… 100%, I just never quite put it into these words. But yes.. absolutely yes, the world becomes a different place.
We had a wonderful 2 hour discussion on this book and probably could have went longer. Left Neglected brings much to the table to talk about. If you have not read Left Neglected, I highly recommend it.
Book Journey 