Alice Brill wakes up one day with a vague, but nagging sensation of unease in her chest that signals trouble. Is it her marriage-drifting along for years on auto pilot-that's so troubling? Her unrealized aspirations as a writer? Her unsettled younger son? Or is it something about her father, once a prominent surgeon but now slipping deeper into senility in a nursing home? There is also the matter of the writer whose book she's editing, in her new profession as a "book doctor", with whom a deeper involvement looms. This is a smart, beautifully observed novel about a woman coming to terms with the hidden truths of her life.
"With her customary grace and perspicacity, Wolitzer reveals her characters' humanity as they alternately flirt with and shun the very truth they seek about themselves, until escalating complications force them to choose to grow or be left behind."
