Friday, June 1, 2012

New 5* Review of Apart From Love on Goodreads

New review of Apart From Love, this time by Jeffrey Scott, author of Finding Drake, a coming of age story of a young boy taking care of his ill grandfather, who is suffering from Alzheimers.


"As one who knows Alzheimer's and its affect on the family all too well, I took great interest in this novel’s approach to the subject. While Alzheimer’s manifests in its victims with common symptoms (and many peculiar symptoms as well), its manifestation in the immediate families is anything but common. Apart From Love displays in vivid, eloquent prose how one micro family is touched by a disease that strips all but the shell of a human from his or her loved ones. 

Told primarily from two perspectives – Ben's, who returns home from a decade-long hiatus to learn that his mother no longer knows him due to the disease; and Anita’s, the mistress-turned-spouse who learns she is effectively the physically replacement of her husband Lenny’s dying ex wife – Apart From Love brings the reader deep into the thoughts and emotions of well-developed characters. It is not a plot heavy story; rather, it’s more of a Shakespearean tragedy centered around a growing attraction between Ben and Anita (who is Ben’s age), and around Lenny’s obsession with recreating his family image through writing. 

This book was a pleasure to read, and its author is an artisan with words. I hope to see more of her work in the future."


This review can be found on Goodreads.

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