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“BERG KNOWS THE HEARTS OF HER CHARACTERS INTIMATELY, showing them with compassion, humor, and an illuminating generosity.” –The Seattle Times
“BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN . . . [Ginny Young] crosses the country for a reluctant reunion with the mother she has not seen in 35 years. During the long hours of her flight, she returns in memory to the summer when she turned 12 and her family turned inside out. . . . What We Keep is about ties that are buried but not broken, wounds that are dressed but never heal, and love that changes form but somehow survives.” –USA Today
“COMPELLING . . . Reading [this] book is like having an intimate conversation with a friend who is baring her soul.” –Charleston Post and Courier
“TOUCHING . . . WHAT WE KEEP IS SOMETHING OF VALUE.” –San Antonio Express-News
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Elizabeth Berg's Once Upon a Time, There Was You.
“BERG KNOWS THE HEARTS OF HER CHARACTERS INTIMATELY, showing them with compassion, humor, and an illuminating generosity.” –The Seattle Times
“BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN . . . [Ginny Young] crosses the country for a reluctant reunion with the mother she has not seen in 35 years. During the long hours of her flight, she returns in memory to the summer when she turned 12 and her family turned inside out. . . . What We Keep is about ties that are buried but not broken, wounds that are dressed but never heal, and love that changes form but somehow survives.” –USA Today
“COMPELLING . . . Reading [this] book is like having an intimate conversation with a friend who is baring her soul.” –Charleston Post and Courier
“TOUCHING . . . WHAT WE KEEP IS SOMETHING OF VALUE.” –San Antonio Express-News
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Elizabeth Berg's Once Upon a Time, There Was You.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the book
Outside the airplane window the clouds are thick and rippled, unbroken as acres of land. They are suffused with peach-colored, early morning sun, gilded at the edges. Across the aisle, a man is taking a picture of them. Even the pilot couldn't keep still—"Folks," he just said, "we've got quite a sunrise out there. Might want to have a look." I like it when pilots make such comments. It lets me know they're awake.
Whenever I see a sight like these clouds, I think maybe everyone is wrong; maybe you can walk on air. Maybe we should just try. Everything could have changed without our noticing. Laws of physics, I mean. Why not? I want it to be true that such miracles occur. I want to stop the plane, put the kickstand down, and have us all file out there, shrugging airline claustrophobia off our shoulders. I want us to be able to breathe easily this high up, to walk on clouds as if we were angels, to point out our houses to each other way, way, way down there; and there; and there. How proud we would suddenly feel about where we live, how tender toward everything that's ours—our Mixmasters, resting on kitchen counters; our children, wearing the socks we bought them and going about children's business; our mail lying on our desks; our gardens, tilled and expectant. It seems to me it would just come with the perspective, this rich appreciation.
I lean my forehead against the glass, sigh. I am forty-seven years old and these longings come to me with the same seriousness and frequency that they did when I was a child.
"Long trip, huh?" the woman next to me asks. "Oh," I say. "Yes. Although . . . Well, I sighed because I wish I could get out. You know? Get out there and walk around." She looks past me, through the window. "Pretty," she says. And then, "Of course, you'd die." "Oh, well. What's not dangerous?"
"Beats me," the woman says. "Not food. Not water. Not air, not sex. You can't do anything. Well, maybe put your name on the list for Biosphere." We smile, ruefully. She's pretty, a young blond businesswoman wearing a stylish navy-blue suit, gold jewelry, soft-looking leather heels now slipped off her feet. At first, she busied herself with paperwork. Now she's bored and wants to talk. Fine with me. I'm bored, too.
"Do you ever think that this is the end of the world?" I ask. "I mean, don't get me wrong—" "Oh, I know what you mean," she says. "I do think about that. Dying planets, how . . . unspecial we are, really. Just the most current thing in the line since paramecia."
The flight attendant stops her cart beside us, asks if we'd like a drink. This seems petty, considering the content of our conversation. Still, I request orange juice; the woman beside me says she'd like a scotch.
"You know what?" I tell the flight attendant. "I think I'll have a scotch, too." I have always wondered who in the world would want a cocktail on an early morning flight. Now I know: people with a load on their minds that they would like very much to lighten.
After my seatmate and I have pulled down our trays and set up our impromptu bar, I say, "I don't even like scotch." "Me neither." She shrugs, takes a sip, grimaces. "But I really hate flying. Sometimes this helps." I smile, extend my hand. "I'm Ginny Young." "Martha Hamilton." "You live in California?" "Yeah. San Francisco. You?" "I live in Boston. I'm going to visit my mother. She lives in Mill Valley." "Nice. How...
About the Author-
Elizabeth Berg's first novel, Durable Goods, was called "a gem" by Richard Bausch. Her other novels include Talk Before Sleep, Range of Motion, The Pull of the Moon, and Joy School. In 1997, she won the NEBA award for fiction. She lives in Massachusetts.
Reviews-
March 30, 1998 "I don't like my mother. She's not a good person." So declares Ginny Young on a trip to California to visit her mother, Marion, whom she hasn't seen in 35 years. Ginny is only making the trip as a favor to her sister, Sharla, who has called to say she's awaiting the results of a cancer test. In flashback, Berg (Talk Before Sleep) revisits the events of the girls' childhood and the moments when their mother's problems began to reveal themselves. One night, Ginny and Sharla overhear their mother screaming at their father about her unhappiness and telling him that she never wanted children. Then she walks out with no explanations, returning briefly a few months later to explain that she's not coming back. The following years bring occasional visits that are impossibly painful for all concerned and so full of buried anger that the girls decide to curtail them altogether. When Sharla meets Ginny (now a mother herself) at the airport, and the two see their mother again, there are surprises in store, but not especially shocking ones. The reader, in fact, may feel there is less here than meets the eye: Marion's flight is never made psychologically credible. Berg's customary skill in rendering domestic details is intact, but the story seems stitched together. Crucial scenes feel highlighted rather than fleshed out, and Ginny's bitterness disappears into thin air as she reaches a facile, sentimental conclusion about her mother's needs. BOMC selection; author tour.
Rocky Mountain News
"A HEARTRENDING TALE BOTH WISE AND WORTHY . . .Berg keeps a tight grip on readers as she takes us back and forth from a 12-year-old's perspective to the memories and secrets revealed at the reunion-- 35 years later--of three sophisticated, mature women. By its finish, the story has taken your breath away with its twists and turns; it delivers an impact that stays with you well past the ending."
The Seattle Times
"In her earlier novel, Talk Before Sleep, Berg was able to draw together remarkable humor and incredible pain with enormous insight into their intricate relationship. She does so again in What We Keep."
Detroit Free Press
"Fans of Elizabeth Berg are familiar with her extraordinary talent for description--you can almost taste, feel, and hear her novels with amazing intensity. . . . The poignant twists of rejection and eventual redemption will pull you along at full throttle, making you happy you stayed for the tear-jerking, life-affirming finale."
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