A Little Piece of Me - Stephan A. Geller

Title: A Little Piece of Me
Author: Stephan A. Geller
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 293 pages
Date read: July, 2015

Marcia Kleinman has a difficult husband, a difficult mother and a little boy, Max, who has a rare chronic liver disease that will eventually require a liver transplantation.

When Max becomes ill Marcia and her husband, Michael, are presented with difficult choices that include allowing Marcia to donate a portion of her own liver, or waiting until an appropriate liver becomes available from another child of Max's approximate age and size.

During the months during which Max's condition slowly worsens Marcia seeks relief from stress by deciding to learn Beethoven's "Appassionata" piano sonata, a piece that her mother recorded but that Marcia had not been able to master in the past.


I'm really hard pressed to say what I think of this book. Parts of it were absolutely excellent, while other parts (mostly the flashbacks) were a slog to get through. It's one of those books where I'm not really sure what the author was trying to achieve by it, which made the depressing parts seem somewhat pointless -- and while I don't mind if my book has depressing parts, I want it to be for a reason!

I was taken in by the cover (actually the reason I requested this book in the first place), and loved the musical aspects of the story, so while the end might seem callous to some - I totally get it.