Emily Chenoweth

I found this novel to be very slow at times but poignant with subject of the story. It is astory about a wife and mother who is dying of a brain tumor and the reaction of her husband and daughter.

Chenoweth explores how a husband and 19 year old daughter react to the news that their mother, Helen, a vibrant attorney has a tumor in her brian which will kill her in less than a year. The character resonate as true and are multi-dimensional. Pig's (the cat) reaction to the change in house and his ultimate dismissal was heartbreaking.

This is a poignant novel about a woman suffering from brain cancer with a limited number of months to live. Her husband and college-age daughter spend a weekend in a luxury hotel in New Hampshire and are joined by a number of couples from their past who have all come to be with them. It is a moving look into end-of-life issues and how family and friends deal with a devastating diagnosis.

A friend recommended this and the subject (a family where the wife is dying of cancer and the teenage girl is beginning romantic relationships) seemed right up my alley, but I ended up skimming most of it. After reading Yglesias's A Happy Marriage, another book like this is an anticlimax. Plus the scenes and the dialogue seemed trivial and the writing unexceptional.