You're not you - A novel

Michelle Wildgen

Picator

2014

300 páginas

10h 0m

ISBN-10: 0312352298

You're Not You is told from the point of view of Bec, an aimless college student disillusioned with her major and stuck in affair with a married professor. Tired of waiting tables and lured by the prospect of $15 an hour, Bec gets a job as a caregiver despite her only experience in the field being her best friend's tales of volunteering in a nursing home. Much to Bec's surprise, her charge isn't elderly and senile, but a beautiful thirty-something woman named Kate, who comes equipped with a wealthy husband and a house full of nifty gadgets to help her navigate a world unfriendly to the disabled.

After a few awkward days, Bec gets the hang of lifting and lowering Kate from the toilet, washing her private parts with minimal embarrassment, and helping her entertain friends. Before long, Bec can understand and translate Kate's stilted speech better than her husband, and the two are on their way to a fast friendship.

Wildgen's book is an expansion of an award-winning short story originally published in Prairie Schooner. While it's beautifully written and finely observed, there are parts where the padding to make it novel-length shows.

The beginning especially feels forced. The first fifty pages, where Bec predictably finds the work hard but rewarding, read sort of like a promotional ad for the disabled. Kate may be immobile, but look at how much more together her life is than Bec's! Look, Kate may be in a wheelchair but she can still teach Bec how to cook decadent dishes for cocktail parties! It's the kind of well-meaning, didactic sentiment of Lurlene McDaniel's Y/A novels, the kind that is hard to argue with but too easy to be engaging.