Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Length: 336 pages
Audiobook Length: 9 hours and 11 minutes
First Published: 2012
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Rachael’s Review
Grieving from the recent death of her nonverbal autistic son, Olivia retreats to a Nantucket beach to take stock of her life. On Nantucket, stay-at-home mom Beth is rocked to discover her husband’s infidelity. As Beth tries to find herself again, she begins to write a story about a boy with autism, a boy who seems a lot like Olivia’s son. A sweet, albeit sappy story, Love Anthony does an excellent job portraying autism from lots of different angles yet doesn’t exactly wow with its character development.
Publisher’s Description
The story of an accidental friendship that gives a grieving mother a priceless gift: the ability to understand the thoughts of her eight-year-old autistic son and make sense of his brief life.
Two women, each cast adrift by unforseen events in their lives, meet by accident on a Nantucket beach and are drawn into a friendship.
Olivia is a young mother whose eight-year-old severely autistic son has recently died. Her marriage badly frayed by years of stress, she comes to the island in a trial separation to try and make sense of the tragedy of her Anthony’s short life.
Beth, a stay-at-home mother of three, is also recently separated after discovering her husband’s long-term infidelity. In an attempt to recapture a sense of her pre-married life, she rekindles her passion for writing, determined to find her own voice again. But surprisingly, as she does so, Beth also find herself channeling the voice of an unknown boy, exuberant in his perceptions of the world around him if autistic in his expression—a voice she can share with Olivia—(is it Anthony?)—that brings comfort and meaning to them both.
Quotes from Love Anthony
Don’t aim for perfect. Aim for complete. Perfection is an unattainable illusion.
We have pills for headaches. We have antidepressants for sadness. We had God for believers. We have nothing for autism.
Take what you’ve learned and love someone again. Find someone to love and love without condition. This is why we’re all here.
About Lisa Genova
Lisa Genova graduated with a degree in Biopsychology and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience. Many of her novels are inspired by her study of neuroscience. Her works include Still Alice, Left Neglected, Inside the O’Briens, Love Anthony, Remember, and Every Note Played. Visit the author’s website →
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