Unconditional Love

Love Anthony by Lisa Genova is the most beautiful contemporary novel that filled my heart with love and spoke to my soul.

The novel has two main themes. Anthony is a young boy with autism. Lisa Genova has perfectly captured his voice within the novel. I worked with teens with autism for thirteen years and recognize Anthony as a beautiful, sensitive soul whom you cannot help but love.

Broken, hurting people is another theme as two women are trying to come to terms with loss. Their losses are different but their pain, grief and broken dreams run parallel.

When real life takes over, we sometimes lose sight of ourselves. “She can’t believe she stuffed so much of herself into a box, banished to the attic for so many years.” It is important for us to reconnect with ourselves and not to just wander through life under the label of wife, daughter, mother, sister etc.

Sometimes when life deals us blows, we wander away from God, but He will never leave us nor forsake us. “Despite her grief and resistance, God has wandered back in.” When life is hard and we question God and find no answers or even fear judgement, we may decide to ignore God. Sometimes in this life, there are simply no answers but God walks beside us in our grief and loss. Our pain may temporarily blind us from seeing Him.

All the characters are realistic. The leading ladies were sympathetically drawn. Their pain and grief was raw. It leapt off the page and into my heart.

Anthony’s voice was beautiful. He was my favourite character. I ‘saw’ him in my mind’s eye. He was a lovely little boy, to whom the response was love.

Love Anthony was a beautiful book. I will let Anthony have the last word:

“I wish I could tell them that my brain isn’t broken so they could stop crying and fighting and people could stop coming over to my house to fix me.”

JULIA WILSON