60 pages • 2 hours read
Lisa GenovaLeft Neglected
Lisa GenovaFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Healthy Balance of Work and Family
At the beginning of the story, Sarah’s life is frantic and exhausting. Trying to balance an 80-hour work week with parenting three young children causes enormous stress. Sarah subconsciously understands that her life situation is unsustainable, as evidenced by her anxious dreams, but she does not know how to modify her life. She dedicates most of her time to her job because it makes her feel competent and appreciated. She feels much less competent and appreciated in her parenting, but she loves her children and husband fiercely. Too often, she feels that her efforts are wanting in that respect. Sarah has grown up convinced that she can “have it all,” can succeed in anything she puts her mind to, but the reality of the untenable nature of her life constantly creeps in.
Ultimately, it takes a catastrophic accident, which Sarah views as divine intervention, to break her cycle of burning the candle at both ends. Forced to stop working and focus on her recovery, Sarah spends more time with her family. She comes to understand the value of being present in the moment. She does not have to squeeze every minute of every day in the pursuit of productivity. Playing with her children becomes an activity to enjoy for its own sake, not another task to fit in between work emails and meetings.
Pre-accident Sarah measures success in life with another promotion, more money, more accolades at work. After learning the value of slowing down, Sarah comes to appreciate that a healthier balance between work and family is invaluable. She turns down an offer to return to her old job and finds a new job that allows her flexibility in work hours and conditions, while still making her feel that she is making a worthwhile contribution. Sarah has changed her priorities, traded more money for more time, and considers her family’s new life to be far more gratifying than how they lived prior to her accident.
Healing and Forgiveness
After Sarah’s accident, she goes through a great deal as she seeks to recover from the disabilities caused by Left Neglect. As she struggles to heal physically and neurologically, Sarah also goes through an emotional healing process with her mother. Immediately following her accident, Sarah objects to her mother’s presence and considers her spending time at the rehabilitation center one more unwelcome burden to deal with. Their forced proximity over time softens Sarah’s position and she comes to appreciate her mother’s help, though Sarah still feels resentment and anger over her mother’s actions in the past.
As Sarah comes to understand her mother’s experience after losing Nate, and after she discovers that Helen suffers from clinical depression, she accepts that her mother’s neglect was not intentional and her heart opens to forgive. When Sarah allows Linus to wander out of the toy shop and Helen stops him just before he walks out into a busy road, Sarah fully recognizes her mother’s pain, which continues to the present day, and the process of her forgiveness is complete. The chasm between mother and daughter fully closes and their relationship heals at last. At the end of the story, Sarah is eternally grateful that she was able to spend time with her mother and truly get to know her before her mother passes.
Sarah also heals emotionally from her years of feeling driven and compelled to succeed. The impetus behind Sarah’s competitiveness and ambition had been her need to extinguish her feelings of childhood inadequacy. As Sarah forgives her mother, she also forgives herself for having neglected her own family.
Acceptance and Adaptability
Prior to her accident, Sarah is uncompromising in her expectations of her own achievement, particularly with regard to her career. She has to prove herself the best at all times and does not accept less than 100% from herself. This carries forward to her recovery after her accident, when she feels certain that she will recover completely, in record time. Sarah does not accept the notion that she must accept a new standard of ability and must adapt to a new normal, which feels like giving in to defeat. It is only after a slow and painful process of therapy that Sarah comes to understand that her complete recovery isn’t certain, and that she must adapt her expectations of what is possible. Though it is difficult for her, Sarah begins to accept that she is not completely in control of her recovery and that she needs the help of others to improve.
This increased ability to accept and adapt extends to her expectations of what Charlie is capable of, due to his ADHD. Prior to their meeting with Ms. Gavin, Sarah had blamed Charlie for his inability to listen and follow instructions. After his diagnosis, and as she works through her own recovery, Sarah accepts that Charlie’s actions and difficulties are not intentional on his part. She then works hard to adapt his routines to meet his needs.
Sarah sets a goal for herself while she is at the rehabilitation center. She imagines how calm and happy she feels when she is skiing, and decides that she wants to ski that very season. It is impetuous goal-setting, at a time when Sarah does not understand yet how hard her recovery will be. When her family goes to Vermont, Sarah still feels extremely limited in her movements, as she cannot walk without a cane and still frequently misses things on her left side. Her accident and recovery have also made her far more timid than she used to be and she fears injuring herself. She refuses to consider adaptive ski equipment, as she wants to “really” ski, not sit on a sled like a handicapped person. Meeting Mike and agreeing to try snowboarding changes Sarah’s outlook, as she accepts the idea of modifying how she participates in winter sports and adapts to the idea that there is another way that she can enjoy gliding down the slopes. Learning to snowboard makes Sarah realize that she does not have to do everything she used to do in order to be successful in her recovery, especially if she can be with her family.
At the end of the story, Sarah’s life is very different from what she had planned prior to her accident, but she has accepted that her new life is ultimately much more fulfilling. She may not fully recover, and there are things that Left Neglect prevents her from doing, but she has adapted to her new normal.
Perseverance
One of the driving forces of Sarah’s personality is her perseverance, her drive to continue no matter what obstacles are in her path. Though this could be a negative trait, compelling her to work overly long hours to the detriment of her family and her own well-being, a theme of the story is how Sarah’s perseverance enables her to come back from the devastating effects of her accident. Therapy proves to be tremendously difficult, but Sarah’s natural will to achieve and her refusal to give up make all the difference in her recovery.
Sarah’s perseverance in other areas also proves important to the story. Though it is hard to accept that her child has ADHD, Sarah is determined to help Charlie rise above the limitations of his condition. She works with him to develop strategies for improving his academic and behavioral issues. Bob resists Sarah’s idea of selling their Welmont home and moving to Vermont, but Sarah does not give up. She convinces him of the merits of her plan, which results in a better life for their entire family.
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By Lisa Genova
