Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Happily married Laura meetsand falls in love witha man who is dying of cancer. Meanwhile, her 85-year-old grandmother is trying to decide whether having a man in bed at night is worth putting up with him during the day. PW found this ``sad and lovely'' book ``continually absorbing.'' (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A dense tangle of relationships forms a rich background for the passionate love of Laura, a happily married young mother, and David, who is dying of cancer. Laura's grandmother Sophie cares for her ignorant neighbor Aida, supporting her through childbirth by quoting Phil Donahue during the delivery. Aida meanwhile urges a reluctant Sophie to marry a rich, elderly widower. David's already grieving wife finds a caring lover. And as David's father helplessly watches his son fade, he joyfully woos a married reference librarian with long legs. There are no villains in this story. The characters are as painfully vivid in their intelligence and caring as in their uncertainty and selfishness. Thurm gathers together life's bits and pieces, creating a whole whose sharp facets are truly reflecting. An admirable novel. Johanna Ezell, Mont Alto Campus Lib., Pennsylvania State Univ. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A first novel from short-story writer Thurm (Floating, 1983)--a delicate, domestic tale of a young mother who falls in love with a dying man. Laura, a 30-ish Manhattan woman, has Mia, a four-year-old charmer of a daughter, and Zachery, a much-loved husband. She is a mother and a free-lance reader for a magazine, and life in her East Side apartment is as happy as her childhood was chaotic. Then, walking her daughter across the street to school one day, she notices a youngish man sitting in a lawn chair in front of the building next door. He, David, beckons to her, and tells her plainly that he is dying of leukemia, and that he is infatuated with her. She is rocked to the soul by his direct appeal; shortly, she is drawn into an affair. They meet every day, thanks to the tolerance of her husband, the tortured avoidance of David's wife Barbara, and the stony denial of his teenage son, Ethan. We glimpse Barbara's grief through her affair with a lawyer she's met at a rerun of The Graduate. There is also the heartwarming, on-again-off-again courtship of Laura's grandmother, Sylvia, to one Morgan Silverstein, recently widowed, a moneyed old man who battles Sylvia's crusty, Yiddish-peppered independence with a love as durable as time. Laura, however, becomes pregnant by her husband, and with the birth of the child--as David's days wind down--she ends the affair. Thurm manages a light, expert touch for the bumpy, fragmentary details of daily life; never veering into melodrama, she knows how a book can be the more provocative by being discreetly quiet about its material--and seem more intelligent for what is left unsaid. Interesting, appealing work from a very fine writer. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
