Left Neglected by Lisa GenovaLife is high octane for Sarah, mother of three and a successful businesswoman; she’s always on the go and always multitasking. Until a traumatic brain injury makes her slow down and relearn how to function in the world she had all but mastered. After a car accident Sarah has left neglect, a condition where the left of everything suddenly no longer exists.
First, this is a cautionary tale about fiddling around with your cell phone while driving. Secondly, this is a really interesting way to learn how someone with traumatic brain injury learns to rejoin the world outside a hospital. Genova does a great job making her readers understand what Sarah is experiencing. In my favorite description, just after her husband is getting frustrated because she can’t turn her head to the left because it’s not there for her, she tells her husband to look all around the room. Then she tells him he missed something and asks where he would look to find the rest. The author’s explanations really help Sarah, and her injury, understandable.
By the author of Still Alice, the first-person account of a woman with early onset Alzheimer’s, this is another winner about the complexities of the human brain.
