So much for that

Absolutely amazing. I love this book.

The first half of So Much For That was incredibly difficult to get through. It felt like there were too many lectures, and too little characterization. The second half moved at a much better clip, but unfortunately this book felt too much like “American Health Insurance for Dummies.” Jackson, for the first half of the book, seemed to exist solely as a mouthpiece for the author. Shep and Glynis, who were the heart of the story, seemed murky and distant, much like a picture from a pinhole camera. The prose is wonderful in much of the book, but it is too flawed to recommend.

In case you haven't noticed, Lionel Shriver is my new favorite author. Unsentimental, at times abrupt, but ultimately kind, she writes with a rare precision and clarity about human emotions and connections. She reminds me so much of George Eliot in her ability to capture people's struggles with life choices - large and small. This book is about so much I can't seem to describe it: terminal cancer, marriage, parenting, disability, love, friendship, money. I guess it's about the costs of things and the value of a life. It's hard to read a book that's 450 pages about a husband taking care of his wife as she dies of aggressive cancer - it's gross and uncomfortable and depressing. Somehow this writer makes the subject bearable. She reminds us that we all have to participate in the decline and death of a loved one at least once in our lives - more than once, if we're lucky.