fiction:: elizabeth berg book reviews

Last week, I read not one but two books by Elizabeth Berg, my latest favorite author. (This fall, she is coming out with a fictional account of the young Mary and Joseph called "The Handmaid and the Carpenter." Look for it November 7, 2006.)

"The Year of Pleasures" paints a genuinely felt account of the anguish found after a woman loses her husband to cancer: how she sees the world, finds traces of her late husband around the house, weeps silently for no good reason, and learns to move on, if that is even possible. What I loved about this book was not only the story itself but also Berg's writing style. She is so candid, so honest, so up-close about the character's feeling and sense of self: walking in certain neighborhoods is painful, having awkward moments when the protagonists's friends ask her how she's doing and she erupts into tears but doesn't want to cry and apologizes for doing so. This is honest grief; there is no romanticizing here. And because of that truth in storytelling, you believe every word and cry with the main character, hoping that something good will happen. And it doesn't necessarily.

What bothers me so -- or compels me to want to be this book's heroine, just for a moment -- is this: how she has found herself to be so alone, a changed woman not only from her husband's death but also her life as a married woman, then a widow. She realizes she has not held on to her friends -- she doesn't know whom to call when she starts feeling the need to reach out to someone to start talking again -- because she and her husband had become everything to each other. While I admire that they are lovers and best friends, spending all their time together while also having their own careers (he was a child psychiatrist and she a children's book author) and passions (he wasn't a fan of her musical preferences), I am sorry that she has lost touch with her girlfriends from college. But again, that is the beauty of this book and of life: to be able to try again, to have another opportunity to move forward. It starts when the protagonist calls directory assistance to find her long-lost girlfriends.

Okay, I'm giving away too much of this book; suffice to say, I appreciate literature that, while taking creative license, also tells the truth in a believeable way.

That's what Berg does again with "Open House," another story about a woman who has lost her husband. This time, it's not death. He has left her. And she wants him back, no matter how much they have lost ground or fallen apart. She hopes all the time that he will come back and tell her he made a mistake, he's moving back in, he will gladly come back and love her and raise their 11-year-old son together.

And the surprise is this: he does say such things. He dumps his little rebound girlfriend and asks to come home to his wife. It's all we have been waiting for... and the protagonist, too. However, she doesn't take him back. Why not? Because she wants him to appreciate her -- not what she DOES for him, the routine she gives to his life, but who she truly is, the birthmarks only she has, the uniqueness of who she is -- and he seems to miss that point. He wants her back to give him a sense of stability and grounding again, and he can't bring himself to find any words affirming what it is that he misses about her CHARACTER.

It's the most gutting climax, because we, the readers, have been waiting for redemption and beauty to take place, or perhaps that is what we crave as Jesus-followers: for things to be made right and new and good again. But the reality is this: it's not always like that. Love between a man and woman, though created to reflect the union between Jesus and his church -- unconditional, patient, kind, forgiving -- is not always like that. And it's disturbing. But it's realistic. This is Elizabeth Berg: life is not always what you hope for, but then again, it might be surprisingly better somehow because it reminds you of who are you and the compromises you refuse to make about yourself.