Review: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Jojo Moyes' bestseller, Me Before You has left me with a whirlwind of emotions. Anger. Heartbreak. And, perhaps, just the tiniest bit of hope despite the bleak subject matter. The novel opens by introducing the reader to Will Traynor a businessman with a thirst for adventure, on a morning when a chance accident whilst crossing the road changes his life forever. Mostly paralysed from the neck down, he has very limited movement in one hand and nothing else. Enter, some months later, Louisa Clarke, or Lou as she is known throughout most of the novel. Twenty-six years old, she lives at home with her parents, grandfather, her sister and her nephew in a small three bedroom house. Recently unemployed and with little confidence and even less direction in her life, Lou is having difficulty finding work. Then comes a surprising opportunity. Will's exceptionally wealthy parents are willing to pay good money for the quirky and chatty Lou to be a non medical carer for their son. (Or as the case manager from Lou's employment agency puts it, no bottom wiping required.) It soon becomes clear that Will is less happy with this arrangement, though over time, Lou manages to crack through some of his defences. Each begins to find in the other, someone who understands them and the lack of agency each feels in their own life. Then Lou accidentally overhears a conversation between Will's relatives and learns that he is intending to die by assisted suicide. Lou has just months to convince him that his life is still worth living. But can she?

Me Before You is a novel that is both incredibly heart breaking and thought provoking. Will is a character whose wealth, thirst for adventure and single-mindedness has allowed him to have lived a very full life with a successful career. Those same circumstances show him at times to be selfish, privileged and lacking in understanding for others. And now, at age thirty-five, he is unable to move his body without assistance and is totally dependent on the exact people that, previously he probably would have considered himself to be a cut above. 

By contrast, Lou is used to putting herself out for others, in particular her younger sister who ridicules Lou's employment prospects while expecting that Lou will help fund her study expenses and care for her young son--all while sleeping in a tiny windowless box room. The novel also shows the shift of what happens when Lou stands up to her family--the very things that benefit her, also put her sister Treena and her son at a disadvantage. At its heart though, this is one of the core themes of the novel. That sometimes what is best for one person can cause grief or disadvantage to another. Will, for example, truly believes that he does not want to go on living and holds on to that, in spite that he must have known what Lou was trying to do. My heart broke when he told her that she was not enough to live for. And it is tough to say whether his treatment of her is a reflection of him having lived a life where he was a cut above everyone else, and being with her and in these circumstances is too much of a step down, or if he is a realist enough to know that their relationship will change over time. 

The ending shows that Will must have truly cared about Lou and her future. The novel, raises a lot of questions about voluntarily assisted suicide. Whose choice is it really, and under what circumstances? What does it do for the people left behind? Can another person's decision really be understood by someone who has not been in their position? Readers will each come to their own conclusion, and given the way that the novel is written they may have some strong feelings about the position of each of the characters--I know that I certainly did. I actually felt quite sorry for Will's Mum, who probably suffers most of all of the characters in the novel. (Though insufferably ignorant, she suffers and loses rather a lot.) Lou's own ending is a lot more hopeful.

A novel that asks a lot of big questions whilst breaking the reader's heart.

Highly recommended.