At lunch today, I went downtown to our local bookstore and picked up The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg, then grabbed a sandwich at the Quizmo's down the street. The book was absorbing from the first, so much so that I had a hard time leaving the little table outside and going back to work.
It' s not Berg's best book, but it's still very, very good. At a family reunion, the middle child announces to her siblings that she had been emotionally and physically abused by their mother. Trying to reconcile their own memories with these new stories is a difficult one. While the mother was painted from the first as being distinctly "uncuddly" and a bit aloof and selfish and self-obsessed, that's a long way from abuser.
Told from the point of view of the oldest sister, the story bounces back and forth in time. The siblings begin to see that their memories are only part of reality and the aloofness perhaps encouraged them to also remain aloof and not be concerned about their sister's difficulties as a child. The only thing not quite touched upon, to me, is this: that the mother's aloofness permitted it all to go on because they were all being aloof and not very connected with each other, despite the surface-level traditions, such as the annual county fair attendance--where they all went off in their own directions rather than doing things together.
The ending was disappointing because it implied forgiveness. And I don't think that was right. It was acceptance. There's a huge difference. "It happened. Get over it. Go on." That's a very different thing than "I forgive you."
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