The art of mending : a novel /

The prolific Berg ( Say When BKL Ap 1 03) is unafraid of tackling gritty domestic issues such as aging and illness; in her latest, she takes on the question of why a mother would be so caring with two of her children but treat the third with great cruelty. Although Berg never answers that question satisfactorily, she does offer a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a flawed family. Fifty-four-year-old Laura Bartone, the happily married mother of two, is looking forward to her annual family reunion in Minnesota. But her vacation plans are marred when her father is felled by a stroke, and her sister, Caroline, at the urging of a therapist, confronts Laura and her brother with disturbing information about her relationship with their mother. As she details the verbal and physical abuse she was subjected to, Laura and her brother are tempted to write Caroline's confidences off as just another example of her histrionics. Because if what she says is true, what would that mean about their complicity in the family dynamics? Although Berg proffers a number of reasons for the mother's singular treatment of Caroline, none of them is totally convincing. Berg is much better at detailing Laura's childhood impatience with her gloomy sister and her inability to fully comprehend the cause of her sister's moodiness. This is a skillful popular treatment of a troubling family issue. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2004 Booklist

Bestselling novelist Berg (Talk Before Sleep; Open House) explores memory, love and forgiveness in her flawed but moving 12th novel. At her annual family reunion, Laura Bartone, a 50-something "quilt artist," is forced to confront the secrets that have long haunted her family. Her emotionally unstable sister, Caroline, tells Laura and their brother, Steve, that their mother abused her as a child. As Laura and Steve-whose own childhoods were reasonably happy-struggle to make sense of Caroline's accusations and wonder how they could've been oblivious to or complicit in what happened, their father dies. This could be the stuff of melodrama, but Berg generally manages to avoid it. Her prose is often luminous and buoyant, and her insights can be penetrating. Her big ideas, though, are too frequently interrupted by the sort of domestic-detail overdoses that belong in less ambitious novels ("I hung up, flipped the turkey burgers for the last time, dumped the oven-baked French fries into a basket and salted them, sliced tomatoes, drained the water off the ears of corn..."). Other shortcomings include a few gender stereotypes and a husband and children for Laura who seem too good to be true ("Sometimes it seemed like I was making it up," Laura thinks). But Laura's thornier relationships with her mother and siblings are carefully rendered and compelling. Berg has written a nuanced account of a family's implosion, with enough ambiguity and drama to give book clubs-the book's likely audience-plenty to discuss and to keep any reader intrigued, right up to the fittingly redemptive ending. Agent, Lisa Bankoff. 8-city author tour. (Apr. 13) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Berg (Open House; Say When) has stitched together another airy woman's novel, this one telling the story of a family of pretenses. Now hovering around 50, the grown children include emotionally distant Steve, psychologically brittle Caroline, and their controlling older sister, Laura, a homemaker and successful quilt artist. At a family gathering, Caroline reveals to her siblings that as a child she was physically abused by their mother, a cold and remote beauty who was doted upon by their kind, if colorless, father. Steve and Laura have no recollection of any abuse, only of Caroline as a depressed and whiny kid; their father-a potential witness-dies suddenly. Trying to determine the identity of the reliable narrator creates the only tension in this tale of unidimensional characters. The story is told from Laura's point of view, but she is so full of herself that the reader doesn't trust her perceptions. Worse, just when one thinks she will offer a revelation, she pulls back and mulls over a distant memory or a conversation she's overheard. Finally, Berg lets Caroline (who has, until this point, been just a cipher) emerge from her bitterness and tie the story with a bow. For light reading collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/04.]-Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A seemingly perfect family deliberately hides unpalatable truths that come to light only decades later. As usual in her characteristic fast-paced prose, Berg (Say When, 2003, etc.) explores a timely subject--here, an abusive mother whose actions went long-undetected--as she introduces 50-ish narrator and professional quilter Laura Bartone. Laura has two siblings, Steve and Caroline, and is planning, with husband Pete and their two children, to join them and their elderly parents for the annual family reunion. Just before the Bartones set off, Laura is phoned by Caroline, who asks that the three of them get together without their spouses to discuss issues that are bothering her. As a child, Laura was a bossy and sometimes cruel tease, often hurting Caroline, who was sensitive and subject to dark moods and fits of weeping. Caroline also, Laura recalls, was constantly trying to please their beautiful but emotionally cold mother. The siblings meet as planned, and Caroline announces that she's depressed, is seeing a therapist, and is about to divorce husband Bill. She suspects the depression is caused by events in her childhood, and she asks Steve and Laura whether they can remember anything about their mother's treatment of her as a child, particularly anything abusive. Laura and Steve are shocked, thinking that Caroline must be mistaken or overreacting. But then Laura and Steve begin remembering incidents from their own childhood, and Laura learns that Caroline was hospitalized one summer when she and Steve were away at camp, after her mother had attacked Caroline with a knife. Their mother was also abused by her mother and lost a much loved baby before Caroline was born. As the three siblings try to cope with these revelations, their father suddenly dies, but not before he alludes to secrets long kept hidden. A less-well-developed plot than usual, but, as always, readable. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.