Review by Booklist Review
Eliot and Claire have been married for decades, with cancer determining the course of their lives for the last eight years. Eliot, who narrates, is a devoted caregiver. Now that Claire is nearing the end of her long struggle, he's prepared to stay at her side in their New Haven home with the help of hospice aides, friends, and their two adult children. But Claire has another idea about how she wants to spend her final days, a request that leaves Eliot stunned, perplexed, hurt, and, as much as he tries to hide it, angry. A decade after A Children's Crusade (2015), Packer delivers a novel of exquisite psychological exactitude and a breathtakingly insightful portrait of a besieged marriage. Eliot is mesmerizing as he navigates the shifting parameters of his role in his dying wife's life amidst a torrent of memories, regrets, redoubled commitment, frustration, and despair. Every shift in Claire's condition and feelings, every painful, sometimes ludicrous test of his love and empathy, every doubt cast on his understanding of himself and how others see him, and every nuance of his "profound shock and grief" are conveyed with extraordinary sensitivity, candor, tenderness, and wit. Packer's gorgeous, deeply involving novel is a suspenseful and radiant reckoning with love, sorrow, and the everlasting mystery of death.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The moving and well-rounded latest from Packer (after The Children's Crusade) finds a terminally ill woman pushing her husband away and choosing to spend her last days with her two best friends. Eliot has stood by Claire since her breast cancer was first discovered eight years earlier. After Claire's treatment ends and they prepare for in-home hospice care, she tells Eliot she'd like her childhood friend Holly and college roommate Michelle to stay with her, and he's stunned to realize that she wants him to leave. Feeling stymied, he moves temporarily to Holly's nearby house. Throughout, Packer explores the foundations of her central couple's nearly 40-year marriage: the bonds, the inevitable ups and downs, the raising of their now grown children Josh, who's still grappling with his music career, and Abby, a pediatrician who is married with two children. Though Eliot wants to continue being the attentive and understanding husband who accedes to his wife's desires, he's hurt and resentful about her decision, and feels supplanted by Holly and Michelle, who easily usurp his position as caregiver. Packer keeps the reader invested in her thought-provoking exploration of a marriage, as Eliot wonders why Claire doesn't want him the most as the end of her life draws near. The author's fans will relish this poignant novel. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (Nov.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A woman with terminal cancer stops treatment--and it gets complicated from there. Don't expect a have-a-good-cry-and-catharsis tale from Packer, who excels in diamond-hard dissections of tangled personal relations. She embeds the narrative in the perceptions of Eliot, who is blindsided when his wife, Claire, tells him that she wants her two best friends to take care of her in these final months, "instead of you." It seems an unbelievably cruel demand; Eliot has been her caretaker through nearly nine grim years. He agrees, confident that "Holly and Michelle would need him for the bad moments…Claire would need him. She couldn't see it now." This thought should be a clue that there's more going on here than a dying woman's caprice, and the hints pile up from there in stray comments by friends, the couple's adult children, and Eliot's own recollections of past moments of tension in what was unquestionably a loving marriage. A retired management consultant, he wants to manage situations and avoid conflict: "You're like…amenable," says son Josh. "Except when you're not." Packer mercilessly prods Eliot toward enlightenment about his character and Claire's feelings. Readers are likely to share his frustration with his wife's attitude, which can be summarized as, "If you don't get it, I can't explain it," until they realize she's just too sick to deal with other people's issues. Nothing is simple in a Packer novel: Emotional and power dynamics among Eliot, Holly, and Michelle shift on a near-daily basis, while Claire at the center keeps insisting that her decision has nothing to do with her love for her husband, and Josh and sister Abby referee from the sidelines. The final pages are as deliberately unresolved as the rest of the novel. Packer's unsparing gaze would be hard to take if her characters weren't so believably, messily, hurtfully human. Harrowing, but brilliant. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
