BOOKISH FRIDAY: “NEVER CHANGE”

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which I  share excerpts from books…and connect with other bloggers, who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

What a great way to spend a Friday!

Today I am featuring an older book from an author I enjoy:  Never Change (e-book), by Elizabeth Berg, a wry and beautifully distilled portrait of one woman’s resilience in the face of loneliness, and of a union that transcends life’s most unexpected and challenging circumstances.

 

Beginning:  (Prologue)

The Tuesday before it happened was a perfect summer day.  Driving through town on my way home, I saw two young girls holding hands as they tried to cross a street against the light.  They would start to cross, then stop; start again, stop.  Finally, all the traffic sighed and halted; and the girls bolted to the other side of the street and began to laugh and push each other, exhilarated by their survival.

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56:   “I’d like to stay as normal as I can for as long as I can,” Chip says.  “And when things start to go, I’m going to go, too.”

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Synopsis:  You know people like me. I’m the one who sat in a folding chair out in the hall selling tickets to the prom but never going, the one everybody liked but no one wanted to be with.
A self-anointed spinster at fifty-one, Myra Lipinsky has endured the isolation of her middle life by doting on her dog, Frank, and immersing herself in her career as a visiting nurse. Myra considers herself reasonably content, telling herself, It’s enough, work and Frank. And it has been enough — until Chip Reardon, the too-good-to-be-true golden boy she adored from afar, is assigned to be her new patient. Choosing to forgo invasive treatment for an incurable illness, Chip has returned from Manhattan to the New England home of his childhood to spend what time he has left. Now, Myra and Chip find themselves engaged in a poignant redefinition of roles, and a complicated dance of memory, ambivalence, and longing.

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What do you think?  Would you keep reading?  I always love an Elizabeth Berg novel, for how each story pinpoints those moments in life that seem ordinary, but turn out to be extraordinary.

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