From the Publisher
You know people like me. I'm the one everybody liked...the one who sat in a folding chair out in the hall selling tickets to the prom but never going, the one everybody liked but no one wanted to be with. A self-anointed spinster at fifty-one, Myra Lipinsky has endured the isolation of her middle life by doting on her dog, Frank, and immersing herself in her career as a visiting nurse. Myra considers herself reasonably content, telling herself, It's enough, work and Frank. And it has been enough—until Chip Reardon, the too-good-to-be-true golden boy she adored from afar, is assigned to be her new patient. Choosing to forgo invasive treatment of an incurable disease, Chip has returned from Manhattan to the New England home of his childhood to spend what time he has left. Now, Myra and Chip find themselves engaged in a poignant redefinition of roles, and a complicated dance of memory, ambivalence, and longing.

Elizabeth Berg does not disappoint. I have come to love this author for the wonderful way she tackles the realities of life. One might think that a book where one of the central characters has terminal cancer and only a few weeks to live is a setup for sadness. However, Berg skillfully develops her characters, and lets them grow, even in the face of death. The peripheral characters, each with their flaws and foibles are also skillfully painted: a teenaged new mama, a woman with the excentricities of the elderly (boy can I relate!), a drug dealer, a married couple who squabble constantly...it's all real and all there. And difficult decisions come up too, and are handled in a graceful way: when is any treatment too much, who makes decisions for a dying patient, and the ever difficult topic of assisted suicide.

One of the things that really hooked me in this book was the descriptions of Myra's life as a nurse, and why she became a nurse. It spoke to me in a very real way. Berg got it. She described nursing and the different aspects of it, from ICU to home health as if she actually was a nurse. Trust me on this. It worked and was real.

Thank you Ms Berg. Thank you.

Sending along to Antof9 who is really now an aunt of 11!

*sigh* another Elizabeth Berg. I'm totally a fan, and always happy to see a new one of hers in my house. Thanks Czukie! I may take this with me next week to NY on my bidness trip to give to another Berg convert :)

I did take this on my trip, but I didn't finish it. Very busy week :)

So I finished it on the back deck :) I'm reading in the sun this summer, and not making lots of notes on my journal entries for books, so I don't have a lot to say about this except that I liked this one. I'm not sure I've met a Berg I didn't like, but thought it needed to be said.

An entertaining section is DeWitt talking about sushi (not the standard "we call that bait" that comedians use):

Most likely be that bait I had for dinner last night. I invite this new lady out, she say she want sushi. I say, baby, what you want with that Jap crap. She say, oh, Dewitt. And I know I ain't gon' get laid without I eat some shit like that. So I do, and then what happens? I spend half the night in the Porcelain Room, both ends open for bidness. ... And I paid for that dinner!

Now I'm sending it to my friend :)

Thank you once again to my FF Antof9 who has introduced me to yet another great author that I would not have found otherwise.

Elizabeth Berg manages to be romantic without getting overly mushy. In this book, she gives us a view into the road not taken and reminds us that it is never too late to go for a dream. This seems to be a common theme with her stories though the means of getting there are different every time

I'm setting this free today in Union. Maybe at Starbucks in Stop and Shop when I stop by for my morning iced tea