Monday, May 16, 2011

Once Upon a Time, There Was You by Elizabeth Berg, 280 pp.

Some of Elizabeth Berg's books are just okay. Every once in a while she writes one that is exceptional (We Are All Welcome Here, for one). Once Upon a Time There Was You started out to be one of those! The prose, the character formation, the observations, everything was going so well. And then she must have read Room by Emma Donoghue and just couldn't get it out of her mind, because there is a sudden kidnapping incident that is almost just as suddenly over, almost as if it didn't happen, and then all the big issues that have emerged in the novel start being too easily resolved. It felt like Berg got tired of writing this story, so she just wrapped it up as quickly as she could. Oddly, a friend who hadn't read Room, didn't feel the same as me at all. Still, I would have liked to have read the end of that novel that emerged in the beginning.

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