As I get older I find myself mesmerized by portrayals of older women in fiction. I love when they reach a stage in life where it's time to reassess, refocus and take stock of your life and the people who - by choice or by chance - are your people.

Like a giant ball of fluffy wool, this absolutely delightful read will tangle you up completely, so sweetly snug you will want to stay more than a while.

Written to take place over a three-day period, this book is narrated in the first-person voice of Gail Baines, a sixty-one year old character you will swear you know. The aloof lady next door, the practical, rational, nit-picky, highly hard-to-please neighbor or acquaintance (very rarely a “friend”), Gail is divorced from lovable, messy Max and together they are facing the wedding day of their only child - the beautiful, but emotionally opaque, Debbie.

Part Olive Kitteridge, part Elizabeth Zott, Gail is maybe on the spectrum, or at the very least, admittedly non-adept socially. A wonderful, repressed, vulnerable, deeply-loved woman, who is capable of so much more — now if only Gail could discover that for herself.

As Debbie’s wedding rehearsal and celebration unfolds, quipped continuously by Gail’s hilariously-shrewd mother, Joyce, (and including a messy fidelity crisis, an employment fiasco, a newly-available haughty foster-cat, and necessitating, throughout it all, a lengthy home-visit from Max) — all the associated emotions coalesce into a perfect storm, and Gail’s world is, not unexpectedly, turned completely upside-down.

Just where it will lead, the reader can only imagine. And getting there, of course, is all the fun!

A great big thank you to #Netgalley, the consistently wonderful author, #AnneTyler, and the publisher, for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.

Links: