How does one like a book and hate it? I'm not sure, but this one fits the bill.

At 50 years of age, Shep Knacker is ready to leave the rat race behind and hop a plane to live out his days with his cool million dollars on the sands of a remote African island. Whether his wife and son comes along, well, it almost doesn't matter. But then his wife comes home and announces she has a deadly form of cancer and needs him to stay at his job for the healthcare. What follows is the year in the life of a very sick and often not very nice woman, her suck-up husband, his cynical best friend with a severely disabled daughter and a few other characters, none of whom are very likeable.

Lionel Shriver does a terrific job of weaving within a story a valuable critique of healthcare in America. Real life examples show how messed up it is - from Shep running through his million dollars within the year (and that's with insurance) to his father's inability to pay for assisted living without selling everything he owns, to his best friend's wife taking a job just to get the insurance they need to care for their daughter. Even Shep's boss lets loose with a tirade on the ills of healthcare from the employer side.

Why didn't I like this book better? Honestly it's hard to read this amount of unrelenting cynicism. At times I found it too graphic (i.e. the husband helping with an enema). At other times it was unbelievable that someone could be this bitter. That said, the ending had a nice lift to it, a hopefulness that not all was wrong with the world.
Lisa Ard
Author of Fright Flight, Dream Seeker Book One