What We Keep - Hardcover

Berg, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375500995 ISBN 13: 9780375500992

Publisher: Random House, 1998

Synopsis

Do you ever really know your mother, your daughter, the people in your family? In this rich and rewarding new novel by the beloved bestselling author of
Talk Before Sleep and The Pull of the Moon, a reunion between two sisters and their mother reveals how the secrets and complexities of the past have shaped the lives of the women in a family.

Ginny Young is on a plane, en route to see her mother, whom she hasn't seen or spoken to for thirty-five years.   She thinks back to the summer of 1958, when she and her sister, Sharla, were young girls. At that time,a series of dramatic events--beginning with the arrival of a mysterious and sensual next-door neighbor--divided the family, separating the sisters from their mother.  Moving back and forth in time between the girl she once was and the woman she's become, Ginny at last confronts painful choices that occur in almost any woman's life, and learns surprising truths about the people she thought she knew best.

Emotional honesty and a true understanding of people and relationships are combined in this moving and deeply satisfying new book by the novelist who
"writes with humor and a big heart about resilience, love and hope. And the transcendence that redeems" (Andre Dubus).

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Truth rings forth clearly from every page. Berg captures the way women think---and especially the way they talk to other women--as well as any writer
I can think of."
--The Charlotte Observer, about Talk Before Sleep
        
Praise for The Pull of the Moon

"It is wise and witty, thoughtful and exhilarating. It leaves the reader observing life with great hope and satisfaction."
--Jill McCorkle

Praise for Range of Motion

"If you read one book this year, let it be this one. If you read one book next year, reread it."
--Barbara Lazear Ascher

"The day you open this book you will miss all of your appointments because, by gum, you will read it straight through. . . .
In Berg's dexterous hands, the oddest situations feel like home. . . . Berg's writing is to literature what Chopin's "etudes are to music--
measured, delicate and impossible to walk away from until their completion."
--Entertainment Weekly

Praise for Durable Goods

"A little gem of a book."
--Richard Bausch

Praise for Range of Motion

"Berg's brilliant insights about the human condition, plus her capacity for turning the ordinary into richly detailed prose, make this book the love story of the year."
--Detroit Free Press

"[An] intensely moving story about the redemptive power of love and the importance of savoring life's everyday beauty . . . [a] gem of a novel."
--The Boston Globe

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0375500995
• ISBN 13: 9780375500992
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272