It’s a weighty business recording a life, yet it’s taught me not to take myself too seriously. When painful moments are written down I can more easily let them go. Seeing life as a story with an unknown number of chapters left to write is both exciting and daunting. My children are already alarmed at the space my life will take up on their shelves when it’s over, but I plan to chronicle the days until I can no longer hold a pen. The only part of the story I’ll never get to write is the ending.
This was news to me. I had no idea I had written a book about a woman who was halfway to the grave.
While the novel’s timeline is ambitious, the reader always feels as if the author is completely in control as she leads them back and forth through the lives of the four characters.
All these layers of commentary serve to make the story’s emotional center more difficult to access, and more fulfilling once you’ve earned it.