There is just something about Elizabeth Berg's writing style that I love. She pulls me in with her beautiful writing and characters. In this book, Helen, a writer, explores life after the unexpected death of her husband. She finds herself totally lost without him to care for her and must navigate letting go of her adult daughter and finding her voice again.

Rather trite.

The dialogues between Helen and her daughter Tessa are eerily reminiscent of Ellen and me!

Elizabeth Berg is one of my favorite authors. I think she writes beautifully, cleanly but also deeply with insight and poetic language. I understand this book came about when she felt she had no more to write and decided to write about an author who is stuck and uninspired. This book was engaging but not consuming. The protagonist was not someone I really liked too much, she was weak and bland. The descriptions of her writing students and their assignments were entertaining but infrequent. I felt like this book is the victim of a choppy editing job. It never goes deep enough for me and jumps from chapter to chapter skipping big chunks of time. The character's grief doesn't seem strong enough. The dialogue however is Berg at her best and funny at times. This is certainly a good book but not Berg at her best and a very forgettable story.

I liked parts of this book but had to give it two stars because I just really disliked Helen.

This book would have been better if characters & plot lines were a little more developed. If part of this book was supposed to entail a mother learning to let go of her daughter, then the daughter's character should have been more developed. The romantic plot line with the homebuilder was also weak.

Maybe I just felt this book paralleled my own life in too many ways to really enjoy it as an escape, which I am usually able to do with Elizabeth Berg's books. Aside from that, this was very similar to her other title, The Year of Pleasures, which I enjoyed but also recently listened to on audiobook.

This is not a book that I would recommend. The author just seemed to go on and on after a number of places which seemed like the climax to the story. I kept wondering if she was going to get to the point.

Unfortunately, this is the first book I've read by Elizabeth Berg and I couldn't wait to finish it... so that I could start a new book. I hated it. I felt like I didn't believe the characters at. After Helen loses her husband, she can't function. I think Dan probably wiped her ass for her while he was alive, that's how pathetic this woman was. Her daughter is a bossy, condescending 27 year old who made me uncomfortable every time she appeared in the book.

The ending is predictable. Boring. Don't waste your time.

Reread this one from my home library. By far, not my favorite Elizabeth Berg book, but I had forgotten how the author can make words dance and you fall deep into her characters.