Product Description

It begins with the sudden revelation of astonishing secrets—secrets that have shaped the personalities and fates of three siblings, and now threaten to tear them apart. In renowned author Elizabeth Berg’s moving new novel, unearthed truths force one seemingly ordinary family to reexamine their disparate lives and to ask themselves: Is it too late to mend the hurts of the past?

Laura Bartone anticipates her annual family reunion in Minnesota with a mixture of excitement and wariness. Yet this year’s gathering will prove to be much more trying than either she or her siblings imagined. As soon as she arrives, Laura realizes that something is not right with her sister. Forever wrapped up in events of long ago, Caroline is the family’s restless black sheep. When Caroline confronts Laura and their brother, Steve, with devastating allegations about their mother, the three have a difficult time reconciling their varying experiences in the same house. But a sudden misfortune will lead them all to face the past, their own culpability, and their common need for love and forgiveness.

Readers have come to love Elizabeth Berg for the “lucent beauty of [her] prose, the verity of her insights, and the tenderness of her regard for her fellow human” (Booklist). In The Art of Mending, her most profound and emotionally satisfying novel to date, she confronts some of the deepest mysteries of life, as she explores how even the largest sins can be forgiven by the smallest gestures, and how grace can come to many through the trials of one.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #85213 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-28
• Released on: 2006-02-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345486486
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
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 © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Maybe Freud didn’t know the answer to what women want, but Elizabeth Berg certainly does.”
—USA Today

“Elizabeth Berg writes with humor and a big heart about resilience, loneliness, love, and hope. And the transcendence that redeems.”—Andre Dubus

“Berg’s writing is to literature what Chopin’s études are to music—measured, delicate, and impossible to walk away from until they are completed.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Berg knows her characters intimately....She gets under their skin and leaves the reader with an indelible impression of lives challenged and changed.”
—The Seattle Times

“Elizabeth Berg is one of those rare souls who can play with truths as if swinging across the void from one trapeze to another.”
—Joan Gould


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

The sins of the past... (3 1/2 stars)
I usually don't give half stars, but I feel that it was almost good enough to be a 4, but not quite.

Elizabeth Berg can always be counted on to discuss the deeper issues in life, and describe them in a way, that makes you want to drink in her writing. She touches on alleged abuse, the makeup of families, and even death in this story. Her books are always quick, I can usually finish them off in no more than 3 or 4 sittings.

It starts out with a memory of three siblings: Steve, Laura, and Caroline. The year is 1960, and they are going to the fair. This short chapter was describing how Laura and her sister were not really close, no one is really close to Caroline. She is too hard to understand. She is a "brownnoser," someone who is always giving their mother gifts.

Fast forward forty years. Out of nowhere, Caroline wants to talk to Laura and Steve, about some things that have happened in the past, things that have been bothering her. These are things that their mother may have done. Both Laura and Steve are dumbfounded, because they weren't aware of anything in the past that was less than pleasant.

As the story unfolds, we realize that there may have been abuse that went on with Caroline and their mom. Even though they start remembering things that do not fit perfectly with their sugar-coated memories, Caroline is still Caroline. Who do you believe? The woman who loved and cared for you all of these years, or your dramatic and difficult sister? As the secrets unfold, you realize who is telling the truth, and who wants to hide from the past.

Even though I wasn't that satisfied with the way the book ended, I am always pleased with Berg's style. Though others have described her as "too wordy," I feel that, that is the most beautiful part of her works. The pieces that pull you into the story and these character's lives. I recall one paragraph,
"...Maybe it was the tender irony of the way that we, blind ourselves, offer our arm to others, hoping to ease the crossing. Maybe it was the odd surges of love one can feel for an absolute stranger. Or maybe it was the way we give so little when it's in us always to give so much more. Thomas Merton wrote about feeling a sudden awareness of a profound connection to others, understanding that 'they were mine and I theirs.' I loved reading things like that, things that pointed to our oneness and, by extension, our responsibility to others."

It's the fact that she is my magnifying glass to the beauty in life, the armchair philosopher, full of wisdom, that keeps me coming back.

This is an Author,I am Glad I Discovered
Laura,a middle-aged woman,who makes quilts as a
work/hobby,(hence the title)comes from an average middle
class family,or so she has thought.She returns to her
homestead,where her father has become hospitalized.
Laura has a brother Steve,and a sister Caroline,a moody
woman.
Neither daughter has been close to their beautiful
mother,or to each other over the years.
A family secret-created so the children will not know
the suffering in the family,has been slowly
destroying this family.
Once you begin reading you cannot put this book down,
until you see how the situation is resolved.
At times,your mind plays tricks on you and you are
unsure yourself,how to deal with the raw, overwhelming
emotions of Laura,Caroline,and their Mother.
Laura's husband Pete is able to put a compassionate look on
the situation and offer advice from a distance.This is
beneficial to Laura.
In the end,it will be up to the children and the
parent,to settle an old score that left some members
damaged.

Give this book a chance
I think other reviewers are unnecessarily harsh in their reviews of this book. One of my definitions of a good book is one that makes me think. A quote: "As for mending, I think it's good to take the time to fix something rather than throw it away. It's an antidote to wastefulness and to the need for immediate gratification. You get to see a whole process through, beginning to end, nothing abstract about it. You'll always notice the fabric scar, of course, but there's an art to mending: If you're careful, the repair can actually add to the beauty of the thing, because it is testimony to its worth." (14) This book is about a family's decision whether or not to repair (mend) their relationships after there has been a great tear through the fabric of their lives. It makes you think about whether there are relationships in your life that need mending.