Books are the soul of the author. Their success is a rejuvenating therapy for authors. They use words to weave his artworks. For them, the word is a temple as their proper use can make them renowned. Book and author are intertwined, they are now no more a separate being as the book is sometimes known by his author and sometimes the author is known by his book. In this essay, I would like to introduce you to very graceful and vivacious svelte British author Jojo Moyes and her famous novel “Me Before You”. This book was later turned into a movie only because of its massive success.
Moyes is a journalist, romance novelist, screenwriter, and mother of three children. She was born on 4 August 1969 in Maidstone, England. Earlier she struggled in her career as a writer but later on writing brought massive success in her lap. She is also a New York best-selling author and the recipient of the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists Association.
Moyes, one of the famous novels “Me Before You” is a story based on a quadriplegic patient and his caretaker. Will Traynor, who was a young lively boy meets with an accident and gets bedridden. He loses hope in life but in his caretaker Louisa Clark he sees rays of hope. Which allows him to enjoy life but is unable to change his mind about death. It’s a bitter-sweet romantic story that throws light on the fate of life.
I felt myself as the head-driven woman but this was the first-ever novel of my life that brought tears to my eyes. The line that “it’s not the matter of giving you a chance. I’ve watched you these six months becoming a whole different person, someone who is only just beginning to see her possibilities. You have no idea how happy that has made me. I don’t want you to be tied to me, to my hospital appointments, to the restrictions on my life. I don’t want you to miss out on all the things someone else could give you. Ans, selfishly, I don’t want you to look at me one day and feel even the tiniest bit of regret or pity that….”the whole paragraph was so heart touching that I couldn’t stop my tears, it just rolled on my cheeks.
The authors writing style is very convincing and moving, at the same time it compels one to form one’s own opinion. The character’s portrayal on separate pages is unique. It is an engaging and free-flowing fiction of Jojo Moyes where both love and friendship relationships are intertwined. More than a lover they both as friends support each other in their upliftment. The story has also dealt with many social problems that one goes through in one’s life.
The story begins with Louisa Clark, she is both the protagonist and the narrator of the story. She is a twenty-six-year-old, small, dark-haired girl, who doesn’t find herself as beautiful. She is an ordinary girl living an ordinary life, she struggles for the job. Her story resembles the ordinary life of a middle-class family where people constantly live in a fear of losing a job. Joblessness not only crumbles them but also makes them feel inadequate and useless. She has lost her job as the café where she worked has shut down and she is in desperate search of a new job. she is unskilled so couldn’t expect an any better job. With his boyfriend’s guidance, she goes for an interview, where she was offered a job of a caretaker. Pissed in her own life, was not providing her the liberty to give care and companionship to a disabled man. To take a job caring for a quadriplegic man like Will is petrifying, but her family’s financial difficulties allow her no choice.
As she begins her work she finds difficulty in dealing with Will Traynor, he is not in the mood to have a caretaker. He annoys her but with time, they both start liking each other company, they both open up to each other and communicate well. Will starts missing her presence in his life. That was until her sister Georgina visited home. Louisa by chance heard the conversation exchanged between Georgina and Miss Camilla, and she decides to quit her job. she figures out that Will is planning to go to Dignitas, the suicide organization in Switzerland, within six months. Lousia felt cheated, she refused to work with Mrs. Camilla as she does not want to be a part of this idea. But when she thought about it in her quiet moment at home she could only remember the words of Mrs. Camilla “that I was one of the only people able to get through him”. Also with her sister’s insistence, she made her mind to be a part of this job.
She researched stuff on quadriplegics and decided to bring life to Will Traynor. She tries all from taking him on adventures to taking him on holiday. She only hoped that he should again find meaning in his life and change the idea of suicide. In Mauritius, she confessed that she loves him and sees her future with him. She knows all about him and was trying to change his mind. Will’s reply that ‘Louisa, nothing was ever going to change my mind. I promised my parents six months, and that’s what I have given them. You have made that time more precious than you can imagine. You stopped it being an endurance test-.’ The word spell from his mouth broke her. She was devastated, even though we know what is right or wrong but in love, we don’t want to know it. The same happened with Lousia Clark, in her agony she stopped looking at his boss suffering.
Love has the capacity to change you as a person as the novel title says ‘Me Before You. In this story, both lives have changed. Lousia before meeting Traynor was living in a small apartment. She was not ambitious and most importantly had never moved out of her city. Whereas Will has fully lived his life. Health-wise, he had invigorated in “crushing people in business deals.” He had swum in volcanic springs in Iceland, sampled warm croissants in the Marais, scaled rock faces at Yosemite, and had gorgeous girlfriends in his life. After the accident, he got bedridden, he can’t walk, can’t feed himself, can’t have sex even can’t move without assistance.
The only thing he believes he had is the power to end his life; and, at this point, he wants to use this power. Here the teaching of Buddha has been taken in the wrong way that pain is inevitable and suffering is optional. But in Lousia, he discovers hope, while encouraging her for life makes him feel better. He asks her to increase her horizon, he is quite irked with her way of looking at life. How do you have the faintest idea what kind of person you are?” Frustrated by her inaction, he rails, “Promise me you won’t spend the rest of your life stuck around this bloody parody of a placemat.”
“Then tell me where I should go,” Lou demands. Deciding that the only chance she has of getting Will to take an interest in his future is to make him take an interest in hers, she devises character-building adventures they can undertake together for her benefit. In this process, they both keep changing each other, and without even realizing they fall for each other. Though life was short for Will, he lived every moment of it in the company of Louisa.
The story has free flow, one gets no time to get bored. Every word of the novel engages you. The story revolves around Will and Louisa.
Somewhere we can find it hard to digest the decision of death, but it’s a personal choice some find the courage to deal with it and some are like Will who chooses death. Life sometimes pushes us off it’s on us how we deal with it. In Will Traynor’s case, he felt blue and stopped living life but when by chance he met Miss Clark his life course changed and he started enjoying every bit of his life. We all would agree with this line, in our life too when we find someone we live better. It’s a novel of must-read, Lousia portrayal is so touching, how gracefully she handles the ups and downs of life. Whereas Will Traynor is shown as a tough man, who possesses a strong good heart. Even in his worse position, he wants a good life for Lousia and arouses no strong emotion in her. He knows his one step may hurt her and she won’t grow. Writers’ way of writing is beyond appreciation.
