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Five Days Left

by Julie Lawson Timmer

Julie Lawson Timmer lets you know how highly dramatic her debut novel will be in the opening paragraph: “Mara had chosen the method long ago: pills, vodka and carbon monoxide. A ‘garage cocktail,’ she called it.” Mara suffers from Huntington’s, a degenerative neurological disease. She hopes to spare her family from having to deal with the worsening effects of her condition by committing suicide on her birthday, five days from the book’s opening.

Five Days LeftFive Days Left tells the intertwined stories of Mara and Scott, two people stuck in situations without easy solutions. Their stories are connected by the characters’ shared participation in an online parenting forum for non-traditional families. Both start the novel with the same five-day countdown before they believe they will be separated from people they love – Scott is temporarily fostering eight-year-old Curtis while the boy’s mother serves a year-long jail sentence, and he dreads the end, five days hence, of his treasured time with his pseudo-son.

The novel effectively builds suspense as the clock winds down. While Scott’s story takes some unexpected twists and turns along the way, Mara’s is a constant push-and-pull as she continually questions her choice to end her life. On the one hand, she wants to spend as much time as possible with her husband, young daughter, parents, and friends; on the other, she doesn’t want to burden them when the disease makes it too hard for her to take care of herself. While Mara’s struggle feels realistic, it is also unavoidably repetitive. The sad truth is, Mara has no good option, a point that Timmer drives home with unflinching clarity.

What makes the story heartfelt are the characterizations – not just of Mara and Scott, but supporting characters like Curtis, Mara’s husband, and especially Harry, a cab driver who plays a guiding role for Mara over the course of the novel. Five Days Left is unabashedly melodramatic, but it’s also an honest and thoughtful look at love, loss, and letting go

 

Reviewer: Suzanne Gardner

Publisher:

DETAILS

Price: $31

Page Count: 352 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-0-39916-734-8

Released: Sept.

Issue Date: October 2014

Categories: Fiction: Novels