The Hereford Times

Making the ordinary extraordinary

12:13pm Thursday 10th January 2008

RUTH is the friend Ann has been searching for all her life without realising it, and now Ruth is dying at the age of 43.

And Ann is about to lose the only real friend she has ever known.

"I'll do Ruth no good by regretting that I'm not dying, too. But I can't help it. I regret that I can't jump off with her, hold hands, take a step and fall, looking up at the sky the whole way down."

Talk before Sleep is a novel that packs a huge emotional punch without tipping into sentimentality or putting on rose-coloured glasses. As much about life as it is about death, Ann's account of her friendship with Ruth is as honest as their relationship itself. "How," she asks on learning that Ruth's husband is not the father of their son, "can I love a woman I basically disapprove of?"

Having instinctively disliked Ruth on sight: "I can't stand her," she says to her husband, Joe, when she first spots her at a party, it is something of a shock to Ann to find herself warming to Ruth. "She was capable of a scary kind of honesty I was ready for, although until that moment, I hadn't realised how much I'd been needing to meet someone I might be able to say everything to."

Elizabeth Berg understands how women think, how they talk to one another, and Talk Before Sleep pays tribute not just to this one very particular friendship but to female friendship everywhere.

Sex and marriage, food, fun and movies, Ann and Ruth talk about everything, share secrets and guilty pleasures and ultimately face a crisis from which there is no escape and which puts Ann's unconditional love to an unbearable test.

In spite of the inevitability of Ruth's death, this story of the unlikely friendship between the conservative and cautious Ann and the wild-at-heart Ruth is as full of laughter as it is tears.

Elizabeth Berg is an author whose subjects may appear, at first sight, to be "small", the details and minutiae of ordinary lives, but here, as in her other novels, she succeeds in making the ordinary extraordinary, revealing fundamental truths about what it is to be human.

THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Berg is perhaps better known in the US, where she has made regular appearances on the New York Times bestseller lists and been featured on Oprah's Book Club.

Two of her books, Durable Goods and Joy School, were selected as American Library Association Best Book of the Year and Talk Before Sleep was shortlisted for the Abby (American Bookseller's Book of the Year). Ten years ago, Elizabeth won the New England Booksellers Award for her body of work. She was made a "literary light" by the Boston Public Library and was given the AMC Cancer Research Center's Illuminator Award for shedding light on breast cancer, resulting in increased public awareness and concern.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

Who do you most closely identify with - Ann or Ruth?

How does Elizabeth Berg convey the different qualities Ann finds in her friendship with Ruth and her marriage to Joe?

Is the depiction of Ruth's other friends, LD, Sarah and Helen as convincing as that of her relationship with Ann?

Is Ann more open to female friendships, having known and loved Ruth?

HOW TO ORDER

Talk Before Sleep RRP £6.99 Offer price £6.64 Other titles by Elizabeth Berg: We Are All Welcome Here RRP £7.99 Offer price £7.59 Range of Motion RRP £6.99 Offer price £6.64 Pull of the Moon RRP £6.99 Offer price £6.64 Open House RRP £6.99 Offer price £6.64 The Year of Pleasures RRP £6.99 Offer price £6.64 The Art of Mending RRP £6.99 Offer price £6.64 What We Keep RRP £6.99 Offer price £6.64 Say When RRP £6.99 Offer price £6.64 Joy School RRP £6.99 Offer price £6.64 All titles supplied post and packing free. To order any of the titles listed, call the Hereford Times Bookshop on 08700 713317 or send your cheque/postal order made payable to Hereford Times Bookshop to: Hereford Times Bookshop, PO Box 60, Helston, Cornwall TR13 0TP. Please allow seven to 10 working days for delivery. All titles supplied subject to publisher availability.