Ordinary Life

In this superb collection of short stories, Elizabeth Berg takes us into remarkable moments in the lives of women, when memories and events come together to create a sense of coherence, understanding, and change. The adult daughter in "Caretaking" remembers her childhood as she learns how to cope with her mother's Alzheimer's disease. Couples whose relationships are at a dead end learn things about themselves in unexpected ways, such as one pair who examine the fallout of the wife's affair while playing a word-association game. The Charlotte Observer has said, “Berg captures the way women think as well as any writer.” Those qualities of wisdom and insight are everywhere present in Ordinary Life.