From Publishers Weekly
Bestselling novelist Berg (Talk Before Sleep; Open House ) explores memory, love and forgiveness in her flawed but moving 12th novel. At her annual family reunion, Laura Bartone, a 50-something "quilt artist," is forced to confront the secrets that have long haunted her family. Her emotionally unstable sister, Caroline, tells Laura and their brother, Steve, that their mother abused her as a child. As Laura and Steve-whose own childhoods were reasonably happy-struggle to make sense of Caroline's accusations and wonder how they could've been oblivious to or complicit in what happened, their father dies. This could be the stuff of melodrama, but Berg generally manages to avoid it. Her prose is often luminous and buoyant, and her insights can be penetrating. Her big ideas, though, are too frequently interrupted by the sort of domestic-detail overdoses that belong in less ambitious novels ("I hung up, flipped the turkey burgers for the last time, dumped the oven-baked French fries into a basket and salted them, sliced tomatoes, drained the water off the ears of corn..."). Other shortcomings include a few gender stereotypes and a husband and children for Laura who seem too good to be true ("Sometimes it seemed like I was making it up," Laura thinks). But Laura's thornier relationships with her mother and siblings are carefully rendered and compelling. Berg has written a nuanced account of a family's implosion, with enough ambiguity and drama to give book clubs-the book's likely audience-"plenty to discuss and to keep any reader intrigued, right up to the fittingly redemptive ending.
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Berg captures the listener's interest as three siblings try to untangle the riddle of conflicting childhood memories. Each character is carefully made real, particularly heroine Laura's devoted and loving husband and his appealing parents, her likable and intelligent children, true-blue friend Maggie, and the flamboyant Gregory, manager of the local fabric store. Intricately and subtly designed, the story charms with its riff on putting light and dark pieces together to form the pattern of her quilt, a theme that echoes Laura's efforts to find meaning as she and her siblings try to make their conflicting experiences into a strong fabric of memory. L.C. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine--
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