Sunday, February 19, 2012

The Year of Pleasures - Elizabeth Berg

I think I've enjoyed this author in the past**, so I picked up this title in a used bookstore nearby.  Once again, I enjoy her writing and characters.  This is the story of Betta, a recent 50ish widow who has to start her life over after losing the love of her life.  In little steps and starts and some big changes she moves in to her future.
Her husband left her little notes that she finds after he's gone and she has to decipher their meaning.

Some quotes I liked:
p. 50 - "Healing hurts," someone at John's [her husband] service told me. "But hurting heals".
p. 123 - It seemed to me that every woman past a certain age who looked closely at herself in a mirror had the same reaction: Oh well.
p. 158 - You don't dishonor the one you loved by being happy.
p. 190 - [When caring for a cantankerous woman in a nursing home] John would call it acknowledging the fact that people truly are all connected, and that we are, at least in some sense, meant to care for one another -- all the time, not just in time of catastrophe.

I know her women are a bit too perfect in their understanding and her male characters are not quite real but her stories touch me.

Published: 2005  Read: February 2012  Genre: Fiction

**I've read four other books by her, The Pull of the Moon being my favorite so far.

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