Book Review: Love Anthony

We all dream of having the perfectly normal family, don’t we? Kids who are healthy. A marriage that succeeds. A house, financial security, and friends whom we can fall back on. It is the dream. An attainable dream, we hope. Or, perhaps not.

In Lisa Genova’s novel, Love Anthony, the narrators Beth and Olivia both watch as their image of a perfectly normal family is shattered. Olivia’s dream of a happy family with many kids are dashed when her first and only son is diagnosed with autism. Eventually, she loses both her son and her marriage and finds herself alone on Nantucket Island. Beth’s marriage collapses when she discovers her husband’s infidelity. The man she married, the man she knew so well, has been keeping this betrayal from her for months. Lisa Genova writes about hard things. She makes her readers feel those hard things and in doing so, the reader is able to look at a world that has been turned upside-down through the eyes of these two women.

At first glance, you might think that this is a novel about autism. The title, Love Anthony, refers to Olivia’s autistic child and the autistic child that Beth writes her novel about. With her unique perspective as a neuroscientist, Lisa Genova is known to write about cognitive issues and in Love Anthony, readers are introduced to the world of autism, perhaps for the first time. However, I think that this book is more than just a novel about autism. The autism is used as a vehicle to get Genova’s theme across. It is so easy to put people into clean little packages: Woman. Mother. Wife. Husband. Cheater. Mistress. Child. Autistic. But, where is the distinct separation between child and Autistic Child? Where is the distinct divide between Good Husband and Cheater? At what point does a person’s life transform from Normal to Different? In essence, Love Anthony is a book about humanity. We, as people, are not islands unto ourselves. We are not the classifications that we are given or that we give ourselves. We are all connected. We are all the same.

“Be yourself. 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? Who has she become?” (Chapter 7)

As I started to read about Olivia’s child Anthony, it was easy to see that he was different. He would be a difficult child to parent and perhaps even a difficult child to love. But as the novel progresses, and as Beth begins to write Anthony’s story in his own words, it becomes clear that Anthony simply isn’t a Child with Autism. He is a little boy just seeking what every other little boy seeks: Love. Safety. Happiness. He processes the world differently and reacts to it differently, but his reactions are all driven to achieve these same needs that every human being seeks to fulfill. It wasn’t until Beth started writing her novel through Anthony’s words that she was able to see that Anthony’s needs were her needs also. She was not so different from this little boy who appears so different to the rest of the world.

“she began to see more and more the ways in which they are similar – she chews her fingernails as a form of self-soothing, she feels calm when her house is clean and all the picture frames are level and centered, she can’t stand the thought of someone else sitting in her seat at the library, she feels agitated when there’s too much noise around her, and sometimes, she just needs to be alone… she was simply writing about Anthony, a boy worthy of happiness and safety, of feeling wanted and loved. Just like her. The more she wrote about Anthony, the more she realized that she was actually writing about herself.” (Chapter 39)

Just Beth’s revelation, the reader undergoes a similar journey of self-discovery while reading Lisa Genova’s novel. As we begin to meet the characters and fall into their rhythms, we slowly start to realize that they are not so very Other to us. Olivia is a woman struggling to communicate with a child. When approached from that perspective, Olivia’s experiences fall on the same spectrum as mine do as I sometimes struggle to communicate with a belligerent three year old and a mostly non-verbal one year old. Beth is a woman who lost herself while trying to maintain and create a perfect family. While my husband has not been unfaithful to me, I still fall on this spectrum of trying to keep my house in order and my husband happy while raising my children to be successful adults. The dreams that I once held for myself might feel tucked away in an attic somewhere covered in dust, wondering if they will ever be discovered anew.

It isn’t so hard to see how I can relate to Olivia and Beth.

As the reader makes these initial connections, she starts to see how interconnected we all are. I cannot just relate to Olivia the grieving mother and Beth the betrayed wife. I can notice the similarities between Jimmy the cheater and Angela the mistress. I can recognize that Anthony and I share some common desires too. Lisa Genova is able to change a reader’s entire perspective through her novel, and that is possibly every writer’s goal and biggest challenge.

“The continue to stare at the sky. Her eyes adjust, and more stars appear. And then, unbelievably, more. Stars behind stars, dusty hazes of light, layered galaxies of energy existing, burning, shining, unfathomable distances away from them.” (Chapter 13)

I loved this book. I read it whenever I had the chance. I even read it on my phone while walking to and from work. It was a deeply moving novel and I would recommend it. My only criticism is that the point of the novel is hammered home, and sometimes I think literature begs for a little more subtlety. For that reason, I’ll rate this book four out of five.

“The spectrum is long and wide, and we’re all on it. Once you believe this, it becomes easy to see how we’re all connected.” (Author’s Note)

Moms Reading (or, #MomsReading) is a book club designed for busy Moms in mind. It is an online book club that meets once a month on Facebook to discuss that month’s book. If you would like to join us in September, we are reading The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison and we will be chatting about it Wednesday, September 25th at 9pm Eastern. Check out the MomsReading page, Like us on Facebook, or join the Goodreads group to keep up to date with our book choices and the book chats.

Don’t forget, the giveaway to win a Cloth Diaper prize package from Hipkiddo is still on. Also, I am honoured to have been nominated to be on a Skinny Scoop’s Top 25 Canadian Mom Bloggers. In order to make the list, I need your votes. Just hit the like button under my face to vote (I believe that at this point, there are two nominations for me. Scroll down until you see my face and vote). And finally, I am still on my way to running a half marathon in January with Team in Training. I’d love your support! Click here to donate, or sign up to run a Team in Training race yourself!