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Walking in Patients’ Shoes: Narrative Empathy in Lisa Genova’s Every Note Played

This paper aims to investigate the ethics and aesthetics of Lisa Genova‟s Every Note Played, and distinctively how such a medical fiction involves readers in an empathetic correlation with the ALS patient protagonist. Drawn on Suzanne Keen‟s theory of “narrative empathy,” the study highlights Genova‟s ability to create narrative empathy in this work of fiction, which has not been thoroughly investigated in an academic field. It shows the ways in which Genova employs a number of representational strategies and narrative techniques to stimulate readers‟ emphatic imagination that may eventually evoke their empathic responses. The study, further, shows how Genova creates a circle of bounded, ambassadorial and broadcast empathic reading that allows her to convey the experience of ALS to different audiences with a view of engaging them in the suffering of the patient protagonist in the story. Finally, this paper is an attempt to examine how empathy for patients in medical fiction is one of the most influential motivations for ethical decisions and prosocial actions, significant not only for how readers experience patients‟ emotions but also how they take actions to support them in real life.