Looking Back - Talk Before Sleep

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg
Fiction
1994 Random House
Read in June 1999
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

What do women talk about when they know they don't have forever? They talk about what they have always talked about, only they go deeper and more honest: with outrageous humor they try to mitigate pain. Intimate and uncensored sharing, the kind of connection women prize, is at the heart of this deeply moving novel about the grit and power of female friends.

Ann and Ruth have always talked as only great friends can--honestly, and about everything: husbands and marriages, sex lives and children, their work, their hopes, their disappointments, and their dreams. For Ann, cautious and conventional, her closeness to the outspoken and eccentric Ruth brings about discovery and liberation, a chance to say whatever she wants, and, most important, under the insistent tutelage of Ruth, to become herself. Over the years, the women have shared recipes, quilting patterns, child care, delicate and dangerous secrets. Each rests secure in the knowledge that they will be friends forever. Then something happens that will change their lives forever, and the women begin to share something more profound than either of them might have predicted.

Written with an unerring ear for how women talk, laugh, and cry together, and with a gift for capturing the uniqueness of personality, Talk Before Sleep is sure to find a place in readers' hearts.

My Original Thoughts (1999):

My second reading of this novel. Great story, although it's terribly sad. I love the friendships and the intimacy between women just hanging out together. Something I've enjoyed in the past and long for again. Berg is a marvelous storyteller. I love her books. Two thumbs up for this one.

My Current Thoughts:

I wonder if this novel has stood the test of time. I'm ready for a re-read. And, I am so very thankful for my dear girlfriends. We laugh, we cry, and we hold each other up in times of trouble.