This book follows the life of a woman named Gifty. Gifty is a young neuroscience PhD candidate at Stanford University. She is working on an experiment about addiction and depression where she studies the reward-seeking behavior of mice. Her goal is to see if there is something in the brain that makes certain mice (one mouse with a limp in particular) keep going after the reward even after it’s hurting him, which represents her brother who died of an overdose after a sports injury left him addicted to OxyContin. The book also goes back and forth between the present and the past, so we get to read about her experiences as the daughter of a father who longs to return to his home country of Ghana and a mother who wants a better life for her kids. We also get insight into Gifty’s very religious upbringing through her childhood letters to God that are sprinkled in throughout the book. Gifty’s story touches on a lot of complex issues such as racism, science vs. religion, addiction, depression, and the process of healing.
I really, really wanted to love this book. The premise is right up my alley, and I’ve always been interested in the relationship between science and faith. On paper, I should absolutely love this book, but it was only okay for me. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad. There’s a lot that I really like about this book. But I think I was really excited for it and it fell short of my expectations. The pacing of the book and the ending in particular fell flat. Normally I enjoy some books that others don’t because I live for all the little details and the slow-paced plot because I love to see the characters evolve over the course of the book. The issue with this story was that Gifty was pretty much stagnant. I didn’t get to see her grow or change or anything. There were a lot of interesting and complex questions, but very few answers. And maybe that was the point of it all, but it just left me feeling really unfulfilled.
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