Me Before You

12:07 am 14 January 2017
Me Before You - Jojo Moyes

Ugh, this book, I wanted to like it, I wanted it to be great and I had hope because everyone goes on about it. However I just really couldn’t get into it. On the positive side, I liked Louisa’s family, they felt realistic, they weren’t perfect but they felt like they could be real people. I also found myself laughing at the banter between Louisa and Will more than I would have expected for a sad romance book. Now on to the negative side of things (from least problematic to most): The romance in this book was also hard to buy into for me as well because Moyes shoved too many things into this book so that the relationship didn’t have space to breath. This book is very clearly written by an able bodied person for an able bodied person which came through surprisingly clearly in some of the word choices that Moyes made. Louisa deciding to better her life was handled in the way we see in a lot of romances, because a man pushed her too. In this case it’s not seeing and working with Will that inspires Louisa to do more, it’s literally Will nagging her throughout the majority of the book to get out and live which feels annoying, and tired. The biggest issues is that this book is pretty shitty for disabilities. While I didn’t have an issue with the ending per se, this book tells the same tired tale in regards to disabilities that we always see and a serious current of “I can’t live a full life with a disability”. This is also a story of a man who is very wealthy, which isn’t the reality for most disabled people. While I don’t think Moyes needed to write a 100% true to life book, the attempts that she made to build a disability community in this book were so infrequent and ended up feeling incredibly half assed and like she was trying to give herself an out when people criticized her disability representation, in my opinion.

 

 

I have two points that are serious issues for me and a comment on people’s reaction to the ending but are also spoilers so on to the tag.

Louisa’s reason for dressing quirky and not doing anything were due to a sexual assault, and used as a way to hide from the world. I am still so annoyed by this, it’s not an implied thing it’s stated. I had a roommate accuse of doing my makeup the way I do to hide from the world, which wasn’t true at all. I also have some experience with sexual assault and the message that I couldn’t live a full life because of that is insulting. So I can understand why the disabled community would have an issue with this book and my situation is in no way as serious a disability.

 

The other issue is more that Will is Louisa’s Fairy Godmother. I cannot believe I haven’t seen anyone else talk about this, though maybe I’ve just been looking in the wrong places. The man sweeps in, fixes her relationship, gets her to embrace life, paves the way for her to do pretty much anything she wants, and then disappears. Sounds like a more like a Fairy Godmother than a real human to me.

 

As for the ending, as I previously stated I didn’t have an issue with it per se because I think body autonomy is important for the ill and the disabled and something that is frequently taken from them (which is actually something that this book addressed a lot and I appreciated that) HOWEVER there is no good ending to this book with the way that the rest of the story was written. If we look at the inverse situation and Will had decided to live because he fell in love with Louisa that sends a TERRIBLE message that if you are loved enough you wouldn’t want to die, and my extension that anyone who considers or goes through assisted suicide isn’t/wasn’t loved enough. So people to the people crying for a happy ending please tell me an ending that would have worked for this book and wouldn’t have also sent a terrible message?

(show spoiler)
romance Annoying angry