Right Side Talking: A Book Review

Author: Bonnie Rozanski
Reading Level: Ages 12 and up
Summary: Imagine that you are a young girl with intractable epilepsy. As a last resort you submit to an operation to sever the connection between the two sides of your brain. Though the operation successfully reduces your seizures, you are left forever with two separate minds: left and right, each unaware of the other.

Imagine further that while recovering in the hospital, you witness a murder. Your dominant left brain cannot recognize unfamiliar faces, and is, therefore, unable to identify the killer. Your right brain can, but is unable to speak. Gradually, painstakingly, the right learns to spell out its thoughts in scrabble letters. At long last, on a table in a hospital lab, you describe the person who committed the crime. Too bad the killer is reading that very same message.….

Right Side Talking is a thriller that will grip the reader from its opening surgery scene to its dramatic courtroom climax. Its cast of characters: a 15-year-old epileptic; a brilliant surgeon; an unlicensed, resentful doctor from abroad who must work as an orderly; a grumpy, relentless detective, and a feisty psychologist Finally, most fascinating of all, there is the human mind itself.

My Review: I started this book online, but was finally given a nook and able to finish it without straining my eyes. :D Yay~! Anyway to get down to business, Right Side Talking was well researched, the author really new what she was talking about in regards to the intricacies of epilepsy, surgery, and the resulting research into how a person functions after the connection to both sides of their brain has been severed. The plot does start out slow because of this, but it picks up more near the middle. The writing was easy to read, and understandable, but at times came off slightly unemotional and rushed. I'm not sure I fully understood the main character, or many of the side characters outside of the murderer oddly enough. I had a surprising amount of compassion for the murderer although what he did made me feel ill, he was so obviously unwell due to all sorts of hardships in life it made me also feel quite sad for him. Everything leading up to the ending was well written and quite intense so I was very enthralled. All in all a pleasant read.

Content: Violence, some language

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Recommend: If you are interested in medical drama's, howcatchem's, and court drama's.