Heartbreaking, but wonderful. ( )

Banal.
Ointressant.
Jag begriper inte varför denna roman har givits ut. ( )

Moving novel about the relationships between mother and child. Kate is thirty-something, a writer and poet, and facing her own mother's terminal illness. The novel was rich with emotion, packed deep and layered. At times, it often felt like the reader was being hit over the head with it. However, the writer made up for this with the closing chapter which was a masterful scene of a loved one caring for the dying. Truly beautiful.
Kate is also dealing with her relationship to Matt, her new husband and father of her baby, as well as two sons from a previous marriage. Although no more than cardboard bratty kids, the stepchildren juxtaposed Kate's relationship with her mother and her own child -- one of protection and constant care. Kate's character is caught between generations -- "sandwiched" into caring for those who came before and those after. Herself a child of divorce, Kate strives to make a home for her children, even as she is learning home really is -- a state of being, not a place.
(Read January 2006) ( )

Sometimes this book was unreal - but then it expressed things I have experienced and thought. I just finished reading it - now close to midnight - as the character in the book was sometimes - I'm alone in the darkness of the night...

Toward the end of the book the main character briefly talks about how in her former life there were no deaths, no births, no things to tie her down and how that was a magical time...

Then at the end she details a lot of the stress and emotion at the end of her mother's life...

She is with someone - and their words are brief - the connection is gone.

Then there are unreal pictures of the character swimming out to sea to save her silly step-son - and the agony of being a step-mother.

This book would be good to read in a book circle - with friends to discuss and share thoughts...