When Quindlen gets it right-which is often-she places herself in the league of Mary Gordon and Sue Miller.Ī violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. By the time Katherine's autopsy reveals that she died of a morphine overdose, the jailhouse prologue has almost been forgotten, so the clever mystery ending (complete with satisfying twist) is an added bonus. These problems are generally surmounted by Quindlen's practiced storytelling. Even more unconvincing is Ellen's long-time boyfriend, ruthless and uncaring Jonathan Beltzer. Ellen's father is so cold that it's hard to fathom how her gentle mother has stood him for so many years, and Ellen seems a little smart and a little old to still be reeling from the discovery that Dad isn't perfect. Male characters are sometimes less successful. With this relationship Quindlen shines, capturing perfectly the casual intimacy that mothers and daughters share, as well as the friction between women of two very different generations.

But she and Ellen begin to influence each other, and it becomes clear that Katherine is attempting to take care of unfinished business in her characteristically graceful way, even as her body rapidly deteriorates.

Cerebral, high-achieving Ellen has always been more her father's daughter he is the English department chairman, while Mom is a Martha Stewart-perfect homemaker, the type of woman who canes her own chairs. After a short prologue about the time she spent in jail, accused of having killed her mother, Katherine, Ellen Gulden quickly skips back to her story's beginning, when the 24-year-old's father guilts her into putting her high-powered New York writing career on hold and moving back to Langhorne, the small college town where she grew up, to care for her mother, who has cancer. Urn:oclc:611578969 Scandate 20111114213201 Scanner literature were judged solely by its ability to elicit strong emotions, columnist-cum-novelist Quindlen (Object Lessons, 1991) would win another Pulitzer for this wrenching, albeit flawed fiction. OL16051510W Page-progression lr Page_number_confidence 93.10 Pages 408 Ppi 643 Related-external-id urn:isbn:0099461358 Urn:lcp:onetruething1995quin:epub:72b9bd16-5db0-47fc-8b5f-1e08b6d604f1 Extramarc OhioLINK Library Catalog Foldoutcount 0 Identifier onetruething1995quin Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3fx8943z Isbn 9780440221036Ġ44022103X Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary_edition Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 17:42:52 Boxid IA108717 Boxid_2 CH101201 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Containerid_2 X0001 Donorįriendsofthesanfranciscopubliclibrary External-identifier

One true thing by anna quindlen