One True Thing
by Anna Quindlen

List Price: $15.50
Our Price: $9.63
You Save: $5.87 (38%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of One True Thing

Book Review: ONE TRUE THING -- A MOTHER'S LOVE
Summary: 5 Stars

Ellen Gulden has a promising career as a journalist; she also has a mother who has cancer and a father who is laying a guilt trip on her. Ellen takes a leave of absence from her job and moves back home to care for her mother. What ensues is a loving story of communication and understanding and passing of the torch from one generation to another. While all this is going on between mother and daughter, there is another underlying story of a father who's not the person his daughter thought he was. When Ellen's mother is near death, her family also faces the inevitable question of "the right to die". This is a complex yet thoughtful novel written by someone who was obviously close to a situation such as this. It is told through tearful yet realistic eyes. This was my second Quindlen novel but it won't be my last.

Summary of One True Thing

Quindlen hit a nerve with One True Thing, which captures an experience seldom dealt with in popular culture. (One exception: the sensitive 1996 film with Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio of the play Marvin's Room.) Though the heroine of One True Thing, Ellen Gulden, is a golden girl with two brothers who'll lose her career the instant she steps off the fast track, society concurs with her dad, who says, "It seems to me another woman is what's wanted here."

The book is a mother-daughter tale that should please fans of, say, The Joy Luck Club. It's not flashy, but it has a deep feel for the way children often discover, just before it's too late, who their parents really are. "Our parents are never people to us," Ellen writes, "they're always character traits.... There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat." The mercy-killing subplot isn't gripping, but the palpable sense of deepening family intimacy certainly is. --Tim Appelo

Literature & Fiction Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction