Love Anthony by Lisa Genova ~ Book Review

Olivia is on Nantucket by herself.  No husband and no son with her.  She is there trying to make some sense of her son Anthony's short 8 years.  Anthony had been diagnosed with Autism at the age of 3.  It had been a hard 5 years, ones in which Anthony didn't speak to her, he didn't look at her and he hated being touched by her.  And it was hard on her marriage.  So hard that she and her husband were not together anymore.  But there was also happiness in the midst of the hard, but now Anthony was gone, her husband was gone and life didn't make sense.

While in Nantucket Olivia meets Beth who is going through her own life issues.  Beth is writing a book and what she writes will reopen Olivia's hurting and grieving heart.

This was a wonderful story by Lisa Genova.  The author of "Sill Alice" uses her knowledge as a nueroscientist to once again bring us into a story that brings compassion and understanding into a hard to understand area.  I was trained in working with disabled individuals and used to work in the school district with autistic children and this book brought me into places of knowledge, perception and sympathy that I didn't know I was lacking, not only for the autistic individual for their families.

The only reason I gave this a 9 out 10 instead of a 10 was the story line of Beth.  I felt distracted from Olivia and Anthony's story with Beth's issues of an unfaithful husband and was bouncing back and forth in my emotions between the two.  I wanted to concentrate on more on Olivia's story but Beth's life kept yanking on my emotions too.  Both story lines were intense emotionally and I felt a bit torn between the two.  I wanted my focus to be more on Olivia and Anthony's story as I thought the book was more about that.  Don't know if that makes sense but it's how I felt during the story.

That being said, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about autism and it's effects on the individual and the family.