I will warn you that this book made me cry. I apparently cry at a lot of things though, like the ending of Schindler’s List and short films about beggars… so, you might be more stalwart than I am about this book. I warn you only because when this book first came into my world, I wasn’t warned at all. Thank you, my loving girlfriend, for not saying anything when you found out I was reading it.
Originally published in 2012, the book became a movie in 2016. It starred Emilia Clarke as Louisa Clark, and I have to wonder how she felt being called her last name for most of the film.
The first time I’d heard of Me Before You, I was making this list. It was high on the list at 787124 ratings (it’s since gone up almost 50k). I didn’t know there was a movie until I saw it on the kindle cover when I downloaded the book from the Cincinnati library. The first 3 hours of the book, I listened to it in the car, so the rest of the book had a gentle English accent when I started reading the ebook. For those that were as lost as I was about the book’s content, it’s about the unlikely pair of Louisa, the former cafe waitress, and Will, a man who until recently did aggressive takeovers of companies and is now a quadriplegic. Louisa ends up Will’s caregiver, despite no training, and the pair try to open up each other’s horizons.
The setting for the book is very small, a little English town built around a castle. There are small outings elsewhere, but almost everything in the book occurs in and around the castle walls. This, I believe, is to highlight the very tiny world in which Louisa has always lived, and in which Will finds himself trapped. The world of Louisa revolves around her dysfunctional family, her long-term boyfriend and his marathon training, and caring for Will. As it’s told almost entirely from Louisa’s point of view, we slowly learn about Will’s struggles and that of his entire family as well.
The characters are deeply flawed. Will is sarcastic and selfish, built over many years as the head of a large company, with everything at his fingertips. His interactions with everyone, including Louisa, are often brusque and rude, and he seems to enjoy riling people up just to watch their reactions. Louisa, on the other hand, is so beaten down by everyone in her life that she barely seems a whole person in the beginning. I read other reviews that mentioned her small tantrums, and how they hated her. But I saw what she was, an introvert with a half-decent mind that had always been overshadowed and bullied to the point that small things, like her room or her clothes, were the only comfort she actually felt. Her relationship with Patrick was so sadly realistic that I empathized with her.
As for the most controversial part of the book, I don’t want to spoil it for you. You’ll find out, as I did, about 7 or 8 chapters in. Surprisingly, it was the evening of Easter when the big reveal became known to me, about the same time it became known to Louisa. I will warn you, it is not a love story, no matter how it may appear. (The cover is terribly misleading.) It is the story of Louisa’s transformation from the awkward girl from the diner into someone who actually dreams of a future.
Overall, I liked the book. The characters, at times, frustrated me, but I liked the story for how realistic it was.
You can only actually help someone who wants to be helped. – Jojo Moyes
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Library of 1000 Books 