Generally, I tend not to care who authors’ favorite authors are, but when one of my favorite writers, someone whose books I anticipate, says they read “anything by” another author, well, color me intrigued.
This is how I discovered Elizabeth Berg. Augusten Burroughs—author of Running with Scissors, Dry and a really depressing memoir that I didn’t love but read anyway—said in an interview that he reads anything of hers. Anything! I mean sure, I like a lot of writers, but narrow the list to those entire oeuvre I’ve consumed and the pickings get slim. Five, maybe ten tops. (That list is a post for another day.) So Home Safe is my inaugural Elizabeth Berg book.
Home Safe is one of those books that’s kind of about nothing. There’s no tangible conflict (the main character’s husband dies, but the book starts after that), just emotional ones. Writing about these kinds of issues, this ennui that seems endemic of being upper-middle-class Americans with the liberty to feel things like general sadness, isn’t always my cup of tea—sometimes I find myself waiting for the sex and explosions. But there are a lot of authors who do it right, and Elizabeth Berg is one of them, at least based on this book.
The narrative of Home Safe follows Helen, a recent widow (and ugh, don’t spontaneous and inexplicable husband deaths just fuck with your whole perception of the world) and her 20-something daughter Tessa. There are other characters—Helen teaches a writing class whose students we meet; Helen’s friend Midge, Helen’s parents—but the book isn’t really about them. It’s about grief, and the way we deal with grief, and it’s about mothers and daughters. It’s especially about mothers and daughters.
When my own mother was in town a few weeks ago, at some point during her visit, she confessed that she worried about me, often. “Why?” I asked. I mean, what’s there to worry about? I have my own apartment, good friends, a solid social life, a great job—all things considered, my shit is pretty together. “You know,” she said, “like if you’re happy.”
Continue reading “In time for Mother’s Day”
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