I truly love this book. It made me feel. It made me think. It had me all over the emotional board. I could not stop reading, falling asleep with the Kindle open to the page I was reading.
Anna and Tobias go through a lot of swinging thoughts and emotions. I can understand it. I have a child, also a girl, who was born beautiful. Within her first year she would begin having seizures, at one point they were counted as 80 a day. Later I had custody of my grandson, another beautiful child. Within six months we knew something was drastically wrong. Then I was given the diagnosis of autism. Unless you have been there you cannot imagine all the different things going on in your head. The author captures that mixture of denial, confusion, hunger for knowledge and answers, the terror and ultimately the love. Everyone reacts differently but I think we all go through certain stages. The knowledge and answer quest. What exactly is wrong? What does that mean? What do we do? Did I do something wrong to cause it? The denial. Oh my. No. It cannot be this. She doesn’t look this bad. It must be something else. Something easier. The confusion and terror. What are they saying? How can we cope with this? It is too much. I don’t know what to do? What if she dies? What if she needs more care than I can give her? How will I let go if it is needed? The anger and grief. Oh yes there is anger. It is the dark secret. No one wants to talk about it or acknowledge it. If you do then people are aghast and judgmental. Yet how do you work through it if you cannot express it? How do you get to the final stages of acceptance and love if you are burying this step?
The author takes us through that. I think, hope really, that Anna and Tobias are written of in the extreme and therefore not realistic way. They are somewhat selfish as they repeatedly talk of abandoning Freya so they can continue on with their perfect life. They do horrible things. Anna and Tobias are stuck in the process. Anna tries to acknowledge the anger and talk about it. However people judge you when you do and she gets judged. So she then keeps it to herself though we are privy to her thoughts and feelings. I liked Anna though there were times I wanted to shout at and shake her. Tobias I really did not care for until the end chapters. I was horrified by some of the things in the book but ultimately I understood a lot of it. I am not saying I agree with the things that happened. It never crossed my mind to give up either my daughter or my grandson, nor did I ever think my life would be better if they passed. Though I was often stressed, (I was a single mom with a limited support system), I never went as far as Anna. I do understand the overwhelming stress and love combination, which the author captures.
I loved Saira Shah’s writing. She is a detailed writer, gifted with the ability to bring you into each scene. Her description of France brought the beauty into my mind. I could picture perfectly the kitchen, the rat infiltration, Anna’s obsessive canning and the scene of Anna's breakdown. Saira Shah breathes life into a difficult story.

This is a gripping book. I believe it is one of those books you will either love or hate. I don’t see much middle ground. I believe it will make some angry, (my post may also), but this is good. People talk when something makes them angry. This is a book that should be talked about and analyzed. It is a book that should make you question and examine yourself closely. I cannot recommend this book enough. I certainly hope it makes it way to book clubs. It is destined to be one of the top books of 2013. ( )

I found it absolutely engrossing, the ups and the downs of someone's life - or two people's lives, really - falling to utter pieces. The parents snap from lovely and loving to selfish and cowardly within the space of one sentence in several cases, and the pain they feel jumps at the reader in those stark contrasts. Somewhere I saw a description of "darkly funny." I don't know that I was ever moved to laugh or found much of anything funny - it was a heavy, thought-provoking book (much like Storyteller's Daughter) with an intensity of emotion that was at once painful to read and unputdownable. ( )

This is one of those books I picked up thinking I would just browse it, not expecting much. But the story caught me up and I found it a great read. Anna, a gourmet chef, has her life all planned out. She and her husband, Tobias, will have their first child, a girl named Freya, and move to the south of France, where she will teach in a cooking school and Tobias will do...something. However, Freya is born with serious disabilities.Anna and Tobias cannot afford a house in Provence and end up moving to a decrepit, rat infested farmhouse in the north of France. Throughout the story, Anna and Tobias struggle with their desires to follow their own dreams and their alternating love for Freya and the frustration and fear her health issues brings. It turns out nothing in life is simple and every decision, no matter how "right" it "feels" comes with its own lost opportunities and sacrifices. Beautifully written without being overly sentimental, this book will ring true to any parent who has ever wondered how to weigh their own desires and dreams against their obligations to their children. ( )

I didn't want to put it down. ( )

An excellent choice for book clubs.

This book was written from the heart by an author who, herself, has a severely disabled child and similarly, made the decision to move to France. While a lot of the narrative is not autobiographical, it also didn't feel so much like a novel. The emotions and reactions were too true, too heartfelt to be simply fiction and it wasn't until I realised the author's history that I could make sense of it.
I was blown away but the brutal honesty of trying to adjust your life to the shock and implications of raising a child who had absolutely no hope of living an independent life, never to walk, talk, or feed herself.

Some of the characters were a bit 'off the wall'. Lizzy, the flaky teenager who lives in a storage container in the grounds of the old house, was an extreme example. But you couldn't help but love them. Even Anna's infuriating mother, who reassuringly announces that "even a slug can learn". Only Tobias, Anna's husband, really annoyed me. I could understand that he wanted to shut himself off from reality, but to move to a broken down old house and not raise a hammer to do any repairs, was beyond comprehension.

This was an interesting mix of misery memoir and travel book, well balanced and wryly humorous.
It's an excellent book club choice; our book club was split in its reactions to the situation and it made for an enthusiastic discussion.
Search for the interview published in The Telegraph for the true inside story and photographs of the family. ( )