Start Reading The Revised Fundamentals Of Caregiving By Jonathan Evison Released As Bound Copy

about/of the way through, and I think that's enough, I hate the way the protagonist sees and talks about other people and his environment it's making me feel bad about myself and the world, Also, I have zero interest in seeing what happens,

There are other, more inspiring books out there for me to read,


Update: On further thought, I suspect that a large part of what turned me off of the book is the way the characters talk about women's bodies.
It makes me angry and hits all my buttons about consent and privacy and violation,

Case in point: There are a couple lines about Rachael Ray's body that turned my stomach, If I were Rachael Ray and read that bit, I would feel horribly uncomfortable, And it upsets me that women have to deal with this shit if they do something as innocuous as choosing to be a public figure,

And the fact that "Revised Fundamentals" is fictional doesn't invalidate this kind of criticism, If I never had to read a phrase like "idle speculation as to the size of Rachael Ray's taco" again, I would consider it afor American culture,

I hear about enough of this shit in real life when it shows up in my fiction, too, I'll exercise my right to metaphorically throw it in the garbage.
Summary from Book Browse
Ben Benjamin has lost almost everything his wife, his family, his home, his livelihood, With few options, Ben enrolls in a night class called The Fundamentals of Caregiving taught in the basement of a local church, There Ben is instructed in the art of inserting catheters and avoiding liability, about professionalism, and how to keep physical and emotional distance between client and provider,

Ben is assigned to nineteenyearold Trev, who is in the advanced stages of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, He discovers that the endless mnemonics and service plan checklists have done little to prepare him for the reality of caring for a fiercely stubborn, sexually frustrated adolescent, As they embark on a wild road trip across the American West to visit Trev's ailing father, a new camaraderie replaces the traditional boundary between patient and caregiver,

My Feelings
I listened to this book on audio, The story was well told, but, to me, based on a formula, Nothing quite that engaging. I am really thinking that the more books I read, the more books I find that are the same as others I have read, It is taking a little more to get me excited, Perhaps if I had read thisyears ago, I would have liked it more,

.I would put this book in a catagory I call quirky characters/feel good stories which is a good thing, This is the story of Benjamin Benjamin yep who has suffered a great tragedy, after which he takes a course to become a licensed caregiver, He gets a job caregiving for Trevor who is a typical teenage boy except for his diagnosis of muscular dystrophy, Eventually they take an adventurous road trip and meet some wonderful characters, I really enjoyed this heartwarming story, It was just what I needed after my last read which was heart wrenching, In the last few years I have been suffering from a surfeit of empathy in regards to my reading, a juvenile tendency to see myself in protagonist after protagonist to a troubling degree.
This may explain the increased amount of genre fiction in my reading fare, as I seek a more comfortable distance between myself and those I read about,

Jonathan's book just about did me in, and I wince in overidentification every time I read a review that describes Benjamin as a loser,

Benjamin's problems are not my problems, Benjamin's grief and loss is not my grief and loss, the loss of one's children, marriage and a lack of a career is not the same as the loss of a carreer, marriage, and subsequent overdose of the exwife.
but I understand the blur, the disappearance ofyears orto the purgatorial force of inertia, Most importantly I understand the need for reinvention in order to carry on,

I love this book because it gives no easy answers, no empty platitudes and it has no time for pity, . . and yet through all its hard mindedness, . . there is warmth, humor, love and the possibility of redemption, Jonathan Evisons new novel, “The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving,” sounds like its about as much fun as cleaning a catheter, And that long, textbooklike title an actualhour course required for people who work in adult family homes in Washington state is just the books first turnoff, The plot involves a young man wasting away from muscular dystrophy, The narrator is bankrupt, depressed and being sued for divorce, His two dead children hover in the background,

I ate it up,

More thanyears ago, when my first daughter was born with cerebral palsy, my wife and I were plunged into that netherworld of home health care, Ive since learned that there are lots of us, Tens of millions of us, actually, somehow holding down fulltime jobs and cobbling together what looks like a normal life, We rely, precariously, on personal care aides, the fastestgrowing occupation over the next decade, according to the Labor Department, Theyre usually poor, female and, in my experience, recent immigrants, making less than fastfood workers, The good ones adored our daughter, read her books and enjoyed singing to her, The bad ones stood on the patio smoking cigarettes and talking on the cellphone until it was time to leave,

Evisons bittersweet novel is about one of the good ones: no Florence Nightingale, just a witty, brokenhearted man who needs a job, Hes not perfect, and neither is this novel, but its moving and funny, and, my God, how refreshing it is to read a story about someone caring for a disabled person that isnt gauzed in sentimentality or bitterness.
Among his several odd jobs, Evison once worked as a personal care attendant himself, and this novel is dedicated to one of his clients, The experience seems to have taught him just what true caregiving is all about, and that insight along with his plaintive sense of humor had me alternately chuckling and wiping my eyes through much of his book.


The hapless narrator of “Revised Fundamentals” is Ben Benjamin, whos just emerged frommonths of blinding grief, His wife has left him, and his house has been repossessed, “Immobility is slowly draining the life out of me,” he says, “like a car left to sit in the driveway too long, ” At, he knows hes not qualified to do much, Hes sold muffins, worked at a bookstore, painted parade floats, “Im just pathetic,” he says at the start of what I worried would be another whinyman novel,

“What led you to caregiving” a potential client asks him,

“Im a caring person,” he says, “I understand peoples needs. ”

“Why do you wanna work for nine bucks an hour”

“Im broke, ”

Despite that candor, Ben gets a job caring foryearold Trev, who uses a wheelchair and lives with his mom, The young man is twisted and shrunken by the effects of MD “pounds at his last checkup”, but Ben sees “a pretzel with a perfectly healthy imagination, ” Warily, the two men strike up a friendship within the narrow confines of Trevs abilities, They watch a lot of the Weather Channel and rate the weather girls breasts, They plot wacky roadside attractions on a giant map of the United States the Spam Museum, the Two Story Outhouse, etc, . And much of their time is taken up with the arduous demands of caring for someone who cant shower or use the bathroom by himself, The work is dull, embarrassing, icky, This is a kind of intimacy most people dont see much of in life or fiction, Theres also some macabre caregiver humor here that only we caregivers will get,

But Ben doesnt focus on the latex gloves and plastic vessels, and soon neither do we, Hes caught up in the larger problem of being: How will he live in the shadow of his own unspeakable loss and move beyond “the bitter spoils of selfpity” And how will he encourage a young man whose short future stretches toward the horrors of a degenerative disease

Fortunately, Evison isnt willing to cheat on these problems: Trev isnt cured by the end unlike Job, Ben doesnt get a new, better family.
But the novel does resort to a road trip that rolls the story

in the direction of an indiefilm cliche, And there are madcap chases and buffoonish arguments that seem to have waddled in wearing clown shoes from a much cornier novel, Although the winding trek to Salt Lake City in an old van gives the story some changing scenery and quirky new characters Ellen Page, call your agent, it obscures the gently handled relationship that Ben and Trev had established in his home.


Still, this is a far more focused plot than Evison presented in his previous novel, “West of Here,” an entertaining but hysterically overpopulated story about the development of Washingtons Pacific coast.
Here, the cast is manageable and dominated by desperate men who have “made a hopeless mess out of fatherhood, ” Theyve all failed their children in disastrous ways, none more so than Ben, As he and Trev and their growing ragbag of passengers drive around the Northwest, we get flashbacks to Bens life with his son and daughter, “the blessed disorder” of parenting with all the dirt and sugar and sweat that involves.
Overshadowed by their deaths, these quirky scenes have an even more wrenching charm, For many chapters we dont know exactly what happened to his kids, but Ben keeps torturing himself with recriminations, The outlines of that unspeakable moment grow sharper and sharper until the brief description toward the end is so fraught with dread and agony that its difficult to read.


Theres a risk, of course, in trying to situate an event of such tragic magnitude in a novel that includes scenes of broad comedy and snarky wit.
Anne Tyler kept her emotional range far more controlled in “The Accidental Tourist,” a masterpiece of parental grief that makes “The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving” look like a jalopy in comparison.
But Evison has such scruffy charm that, as his story bounces along, its easy to forgive him the rough spots,

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I was actually enjoying this book right up to the time of the road trip, which was the whole point of the story, The narrator is a doofus who lost his wife and two children, and is now employed as a caregiver for a teenage boy who is afflicted with MD, Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Benjamin the narrator is a good match for Trevor, the boy in his charge, Benjamin is childishly humorous and I couldn't stop picturing him as Seth Rogan, Everything he said sounded like Seth Rogan, which is probably why I enjoyed the book so much, The characters are all stock figures, but since the dialogue was good and the story was moving, I was happy to watch these little people play around, They were funny and cute,

But then they go on this formulaic road trip and meet more characters who are all straight from Central Casting, and the story gets old, Plus Seth Rogan Benjamin and his constant whining really got on my nerves the more I learned about him, You know those books where you feel sorry for the guy till you realize he really does deserve his fate

What really drove me crazy is the mess created when Benjamin wouldn't sign divorce papers for his wife so she sent a process server to serve him with what: more papers It doesn't matter.
The point is that he and this process server go through a few exaggerated chase scenes and then he imagines the process server is following him across the country on his road trip.
This is so off base on so many levels, Don't these authors get help from their editors when they go so far afield This isn't fiction this is fantasy, Life is what happens Evison is definitely in Tropper and Perotta country, They're early middle aged men, just trying to get by, wellmeaning but in a downward spiral with no earthly hope of redemption, experience a late coming of age, With a beautifully rendered mixture of humor and heartbreak, this novel tells Ben Benjamin's story straight from his soul, The roadtrip section provides predictable encounters with quirky characters that will help Ben than more than he helps in return, And Trevor, his charge, ayear old man afflicted with a particularly cruel form of MS, is not a cookie cutter creation, but a true original, The story advances almost cinematically beautifully rendered physical description and accurate dialogue, Highly recommended. Thank you, thank you, Robin Beerbower for shouting out this title at theth Annual Librarian Shout 'n Share at Bookexpo, I knew the minute I heard Robin pitch The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison that I had to read this book, Robin's shout out was back in June and considering several other GoodReads friends rated it highly,what took me so long I really don't know but don't make my mistake.
Read this book!

Having read Evison's West of Here and liking it, I'm not certain I was quite prepared for The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving.
I'm thinking more of the same but there is no comparison between the two other than plain good writing, It is heartening when an author can take a different direction and just get it right, If I could give The Revised Fundamentals of CaregivingI would, It's not always easy to explain why a book makes my best list but suffice it to say this one just did, I loved it.

Easy premise. Ben Benjamin has lost it all though early on you are not quite certain how or why, All you know is that he's down to his last bucks, takes a course as a caregiver and is interviewing for a job, Little does he know this client, Trev,year old, suffering from muscular dystrophy, and also one royal pain in the you know what, will change his life, The relationship that develops between these two mismatched souls is something to read, Their constant banter, all I can think is guy speak, made me laugh, but I also kept the tissues nearby as there's serious stuff going on here too, These two guys, both searching for something, eventually set out on one heck of an American road trip, There are other characters of course, and all are brought vividly to life by Evison's expertise,

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving is a story I won't soon forget and one I'll recommend to many, Excellent!.