Kaarla V. (hestia74) reviewed on 1/28/2011 + 11 more book reviews

As a recent member of Planet Motherhood, I identified with this book right from the beginning. Ellen Rogers is a divorced mother of five and former marketing executive who suddenly finds herself living a parents next-to-worst nightmare: her eldest son, Ned, is rendered a quadriplegic after a car accident while studying in college several hundred miles away from home. The whole familys world is turned upside down without warning, and Rogers must include in her long list of responsibilities serving as a personal care assistant for her son.

Amidst all the chaos of raising a couple of still teenage daughters and another son just starting college, while also caring for Ned, Rogers finds out about Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers for the Disabled, an organization dedicated to train and provide highly intelligent and sociable monkeys as helpers so that seriously disabled people can lead more independent lives. Theres a waiting list, however, and after almost a year of waiting and several situations that make everything seem harder, the family finally get Kasey, a highly trained monkey with a diva attitude to match. While learning the ropes of caring for this demanding little animal, and about the rigid social hierarchy of monkey world, this close-knit family of six (plus two dogs) must also learn that forging emotional bonds, even between animals and humans, requires time and patience. The strict routines into which the family must acquiesce in order to keep Kasey happy and functioning at a high level give much needed structure to a former improvising team. What shines through in this story is the fierce love among all the family members, including the teenage sisters, who sometimes can come across as spoiled brats.

And thats another excellent element of this book: the author does not try to make her children and herself seem more sympathetic than they really are. Her descriptions of Ned especially are by turns blindly adoring and objectively reported so as to make him look like a fussy child at best and like a neurotic nagger at worst. Even though the author does not give in to facile sentimentality, I found myself crying already in the first chapter. There are also quite a few good laughs though, so the book achieves some kind of understated balance.

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