THE BREAKDOWN LANE by Jacquelyn Mitchard

[agate]

I'm finally getting around to reading (listening to) THE BREAKDOWN LANE by Jacquelyn Mitchard, a novel about a woman who is diagnosed with MS.

Has anybody else read it?

[lady_express_44]

No, Agate. Tell us more . . .

Cherie
_________________
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
Naguib Mahfouz

[agate]

I'm still in the middle of it, but it's about a woman with 3 kids whose husband decides to "find himself" in a sort of commune and disappears, though he leads his family to believe that he's available by giving them addresses and phone numbers.

He turns out to be unreachable, and at about this point Julie, the mom, develops symptoms of MS and learns that she has MS. She starts on one of the ABCRs (my guess is that it's Avonex) but is incapacitated for several days each week with the side effects.

One of the older kids, cooperating with Julie's best friend, takes over Julie's job when she's too ill to do it herself. She's an advice columnist for the local newspaper, and each section of the book starts off with one of the readers' letters and the reply.

So far it's an absorbing book, and the advice column letters are often funny (in a grim way).

The two older kids finally take off in an attempt to find their dad... (to be continued)

[agate]

--Having finished this book, I'd ruin it for others if I said much more than I've already said.

I didn't like the way the book ended. But as far as the way MS was represented goes, the author did a good job of capturing some of the insidious and unpredictable features of the disorder--the way a person can feel fine one day and be flattened out and nearly immobilized the next.

The author doesn't have MS but her best friend does.

[lady_express_44]

Thanks, Agate.

Is it too depressing to read?

Cherie
_________________
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
Naguib Mahfouz

[agate]

I didn't find it at all depressing. In fact, it seemed as if the author might have been a little too eager to give it a very upbeat happy ending.

And the MS symptoms were not overemphasized. If anything, they might have been underemphasized since the main character had a lot of people in her life and a lot of activities going on. Dealing with them takes up a large part of the book.

Nearly every section opens with a letter to Julie in her capacity as advice columnist and the reply to it, and these are often so amusing that they lighten up the book too.

[lady_express_44]

Great, thanks.

Cherie
_________________
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
Naguib Mahfouz