Book Blurb:
For fifty years Abe and Jane have been coming to Central Park, as starry-eyed young lovers, as frustrated and exhausted parents, as artists watching their careers take flight. They came alone when they needed to get away from each other, and together when they had something important to discuss. The Park has been their witness for half a century of love. Until now. Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew—their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives—and the parts they didn’t always want to know—the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs. Told in various points of view, even in conversation with Central Park itself, these voices weave in and out to paint a portrait as complicated and essential as love itself.
My Review: 3.5 stars
This is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer immediately caught my attention when I read the insightful blurb about the book. Let’s face it, dying is not a fun topic to read about, but when I saw that it was told in multiple viewpoints, including Central Park, I grabbed at the opportunity to read it.
The book is told by Jane, Abe, Max (their son), by a female student of Abe’s (oddly) and most interestingly from the POV of the park where they spent so much time together. This is a beautifully written book with a plethora of quotes that I saved. You can tell the author is an incredibly talented wordsmith and has a way of describing things that blew me away. On the flip side, I really wish there were more details about Max and the complicated relationship he had with his mother.
Overall, I enjoyed the conceptual idea for book, but there were parts that lacked the oomph that it needed. The excellent writing sustained me more than the plot.
Quotes I liked:
Just being with you feels like being chosen, winning a prize.”
“The thing about parenting, Jane thinks, is how often failure is on the line. All the time. Every time.”
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