One True Thing (Audio Cassette)

The novel is told from the point-of-view of Ellen, an ambitious, successful, intelligent woman who quits her job and returns to her small college town to nurse her mother, who is dying of cancer. While Ellen's mother's cancer is an essential part of the story, "One True Thing" is most effective in its focus on family relationships, how we view and remember those relationships, and the mistakes we make in how we view relationships and each other.

One part of the story I especially enjoyed was a conversation between Ellen and her mother, Kate. They were reading "Pride and Prejudice" and Kate, a warm and nurturing housewife, has a rather interesting opinion. "I remember admiring it but being a little put off by it, too, because it does that cheap thing that people do, it makes the sister who is sweet and domestic and good a second fiddle to the one who is smart and outspoken...It didn't seem fair to me, that Jane was so good and yet Elizabeth is the one who is admired...Jane Austen should have known better than to make women into that kind of either-or thing...Women writers of all people should know better than to pigeonhole women, put them in little groups, the smart one, the sweet one..." This conversation between Ellen and Kate is in many ways the backbone of the story.

Also, I was very surprised by the revelation made at the end of the book. Isn't it great when an author can fool you about something? I must admit that I never saw that coming, and up until that moment, the book had not made me cry. It did then.

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I say loneliness, because human life is lonely. Virtually all of what we are lies beneath the surface. But effective communication is limited to our ability to toss words and feelings into the voids between us. To make it worse, do we transmit and receive with honesty? To make it worse, whose needs am I really meeting? Mine or yours?

I could write about this book for hours, but Amazon says 1,000 words max. Here are a few things that come to mind:

Ellen is a beautiful character. Quindlen uses the first person to share Ellen's honesty and contradictions. Claiming to take after her father, Ellen is steeped in her mother's graceful humanity. Young and naive, she is also ambitious and angry. Yet she lovingly devotes herself to the care of her mother.

This book fails to succumb to the melancholy of the subject. Most of the characters make great strides toward fulfilling and loving relationships, most notably, of course, Ellen and her Mom.

I like Quindlen's writing, which is at times is both blunt and delicate, honest and opinionated, but always thoughtful and revealing.

The book could have ended successfully at any one of the last several hundred sentences. I pictured Quindlen (smile), pounding away at the keyboard, trying to touch on the many important insights pouring from her brilliant mind, before bringing the story to a close.

It's a truly marvelous thing to spend a few bucks on a used book, read it, and experience such a strong emotional connection with a talented, emotional author and her characters.

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