Bettyville by George Hodgman โ€“ 279 pages

Book Blurb:

When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himselfโ€”an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cookโ€”in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He canโ€™t bring himself to force her from the home both treasureโ€”the place where his fatherโ€™s voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict: Betty, who speaks her mind but cannot quite reveal her heart, has never really accepted the fact that her son is gay.

My Review: 3 stars

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I think I began to read Bettyville at a time when I needed a faster paced book. My own personal weights of suddenly having an empty nest may have dampened the experience of this book.

The writing itself was excellent and the authorโ€™s attention to detail put all my senses smack in the middle of Paris, Missouri, yet at the same time, this is a book that I could easily put down and wait days before coming back to.

This is perhaps a book thatโ€™ll I come back to and reread at a different time to see if it alters my review.

Quotes I liked:

I am a loner, but I hate to lose people. I can only imagine how scary it is to know that the person one is losing is oneself.”

– โ€œI have given up trying to control her clothes. G-d grant me the serenity to accept the clothes I cannot change.โ€

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