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Me Before You

AuthorJojo Moyes

NarratorVarious

Duration16h 45m

CategoriesAdult Fiction, Romance

PublisherClipper

VersionUnabridged

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Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that. What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

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James Louis 9 Aug 2021

Sad that this book is so popular

Unfortunately like a minority of other bestselling books, this is one of little merit, and is full of ableist saviourism. I would recommend against reading this, especially if one is disabled themselves.

The book’s protagonist Lou spends the book trying to ‘save’ Will, a quadriplegic man.

Will had an accident, leaving him with limited movement of one arm from a c5 spinal injury.

He is suicidal as he feels he is unable to live the life he wants to, and his family’s solution is to have him live in their annex and hire a carer (Lou) to watch over him every minute of the day.

After an unsuccessful suicide attempt, the family agrees that he can go to dignitas if he agrees to wait 6 months.

Lou secretly finds out about this from Will’s mum, and plans a series of ‘adventures’ to try to get Will out of the house and engaged with life again. One of the big resources she uses for ideas and advice is a forum for quadriplegics. However instead of putting Will in touch with others in similar positions, or telling him about the forum, Lou (as his mum also does) takes agency from him by deciding what would be best for him.

Inevitably, Lou (his paid carer) and Will fall in love.
But he still doesn’t want to live, and though at the end he asserts that the last six months were the best of his life, he still wants to die as he wants to be how he used to.

It’s littered with really disrespectful ableist language to describe Will- ‘cripple’, ‘useless arms’, questioning if someone like Will could fall in love or have a relationship. At least 5 different characters said specifically that no one would want to live like that (disabled/wheelchair user).

The grandad character seems to be a prop to give Lou’s family more financial burden. He is disabled, but it isn’t said how. He only has one line in the whole book ‘birthday cake’, though it seems he can also talk enough to offer his bedroom for use (although apparently no one liked how he made his room smell, so his offer was rejected).

The whole book is just based around non disabled saviourism, and is a really crappy book to be promoting on a service such as this.

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