Wow . . . even if I hadn't been a psychology major this is a captivating memoir. A telling look into MBP it is a quick, saddening, and hopeful read.

Do yourself a favor.

When Richard and Sara Everton move to the small Mexican village of Ibarra to restart the copper mine abandoned by Richard's grandfather, they find a place where they would gladly live and die if they were to be born again. Unfortunately, it is dying that comes to dominate their living. Almost immediately, Richard is discovered to have a fatal blood disease. From then on their precious moments in Ibarra are highlighted by the specter of Richard's death. But this is not the only tale being told here. Each chapter focuses on different characters who live in Ibarra.

We listened to this on audiobook while on vacation. In her fine reading, Barbara Rosenblat offers an narration that is especially effective in revealing the beauty of the prose.

Noone is a successful writer whose radio serial, Noone at Night, has brought him fans and fame. But his long-term companion, Jess, has just left him, and he's a mess: he can't write, he can't communicate with his father, and he can't understand why Jess is suddenly changing. Enter a special fan, a sick 13-year-old boy who forms a deep connection with Gabriel over the radio and telephone. Peter Lomax was severely abused as a child but finds he can trust Gabriel, who in turn discovers he can open himself up to this amazing boy. However, Gabriel slowly begins to doubt his young friend, just as he has doubted other important figures in his life. While the novel centers on the mysterious Peter this is less a suspense story than a tale about major and minor betrayals by lovers, friends, and family members.

I found the story a little too graphic with gay sex and the dialogue between Peter and Gabrial contrived and stiff. The suspense of the story was interesting, but the ending too jumbled.

This book wasn't nearly as groundbreaking or as insightful as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. In fact, I didn't really feel like it was particularly insightful at all. The characters were all very good and very well written, and interesting, and interesting things happen in the story- a very good version of what it was, which was another novel.
I did really enjoy listening to it, and parts of it made me laugh out loud and parts of it made me very sad. It does run the entire gamut of human emotion. The ending was pretty pat, how everyone ends up so happy, and that was both disappointing and feel-good at the same time, and ultimately unrealistic.
And yet, so enjoyable and so accurate in its way.

Good book! A different kind of family drama. I love the British setting, since I love the UK! great story. Very funny in parts!

Read Feb 10th, 2007.
Fun and easily readable, but not as good as The Curious Incident.

A spot of bother is quite understatement for what these characters endure. George Hall, retired and content with building his painting studio, discovers a lesion on his skin. Despite a diagnosis of eczema, he thinks he is dying of cancer, but no one in George's family notices his mental decline because of their own bit of trouble. Haddon captures his characters' frailties and strengths while injecting a lot of humor. This is a funny family.

A group of women care for a friend who is dying of breast cancer. The characters are well drawn & the book is interesting, but before the ending, the sick friend leaves the group to join a relative in another state. This makes the story seem incomplete.

From a Library Journal Review:
Because it is rendered with such clarity, authority and feeling, Berg's novel may cause readers to forget that this story of a woman's death from cancer is fiction. Berg's depiction of a sisterhood of women banding together to succor a friend is never falsely sentimental. Accurately observed details and honest descriptions of the body's frailties make the narrative gripping and immediate. But intensely real characterizations, outrageous black humor and graceful prose are what render it memorable. Narrator Ann Stanley, a nurse who loves her young daughter and husband but sometimes hates the institution of marriage, recognizes a soul mate when she meets Ruth Thomas. A talented artist, Ruth is mercurial, outspoken, fearless, charming, charismatic. When she leaves her caustic, icy husband and her teenaged son, she is eager to embrace new experiences, to find love and artistic fulfillment. Instead, she is sidetracked by cancer, which she fights gallantly, even into its terminal phase. Ann and several other devoted friends spend days and nights by Ruth's side, helping her to die. Berg writes candidly--if ultimately a bit too schematically--about the bonds between women that transcend the male-female relationship. A celebration of intimate friendship as well as a cry of grief, this book is a weeper, all right, but its effect is cathartic.

A happily married woman finds her life torn apart when her husband, walking down an icy street, is hit on the head by a chunk of ice fallen from a roof. Although he is in a coma, the wife does everything in her power to return him to a normal life.

An ordinary woman caught up in unusual circumstances. Lainey is a wife/mother/office worker whose life is suddenly changed when her husband is sent into a coma by a freak accident. The only one who believes that he will one day wake up, she visits him daily, bringing him stimulus from everyday life in an attempt to reach him. "I line up the little spice bags all across his chest. All across his University of California T-shirt are requests from the kitchen. Come back, says the curry, the oregano. And me." Lainey is sustained through her ordeal by the support of two special women: Alice, who lives next door, and Evie, the ghost of the woman who lived in Lainey's house in the Forties. A touching and enjoyable read, this novel is romantic without being a romance.

Although Annie knows that her husband has cancer & is getting weaker, they plan a vacation at the lakeside cottage they & their three children have visited for many years. After her husband succumbs to his illness, Annie tries to guide her family through the grief that engulfs them & come to terms, herself with their loss. A very moving & delicately written story by the author of Ordinary People.

Husband dies of cancer. Story deals with aftermath.

Although we know at the beginning how this book is going to end, Ann Patchett has drawn us so deeply into the story of her friendship with poet & writer Lucy Grealy that I could not help crying. Lucy had struggled so hard since the age of 10 to overcome her cancer that it was refreshing to read about all the happy times she & Ann spent together & also all the positive things that had gone on in her life. Yet she was never able to completely overcome her disfigurement, like grief it had become a part of who she was & eventually she becaame too worn down to continue the struggle. Ann Patchett treads very lightly in this portrayal of their friendship but her sense of loss is still evident.

Heart-wrenchingly painful to read - but also brilliant.

A young mother, expecting her first baby & also a mother to her husband's 2 sons learns that her own mother has a terminal illness. Her mother then comes to live with her family. The interplay between birth & approaching death, new life & the end of life is handled poignantly & with grace.