My great-grandfather was an ophthalmologist, and so he and my great-grandmother were fairly well off. They both died when I was in my early twenties, and this book caused me to vividly recall my visits to their house during those last couple of years. They were lively people when I was growing up, so it was strange to see the hospital bed in the living room, so out of place among their lavish Victorian furniture. They could no longer make it up and down the stairs, so everything they needed was brought down by their nurse, and the entire second floor felt empty and abandoned. The house that hosted every Christmas dinner I had ever been to, the house that me and my cousins would thunder around in our footie pajamas in, the house with the fireplace and the grand piano and the smell of turkey in the oven, this house was permeated with the knowledge of death. We all knew what was coming: it cast a pall over everyone who visited. But what I remember most was that clinical-looking hospital bed in the living room, so out of place among their lavish Victorian furniture.

I found the narrator's description of George's Parkinson' s symptoms eerily accurate..my mother passed away in January form complications due to Atypical Parkinson's. The descriptions caused me to wonder at how much we may have misinterpreted her behaviour/needs. It was really weird to read the description of ants crawling on the ceiling...my mother kept pointing them out to me! I also loved his descriptions of the 'skin' of the sky, the 'skin' of the water.

One irritating construction he used several times was "off of"...drives me nuts!

The various remarks about the feelings in the woods or water were very reminiscent of being in the Michigan woods for summer camp.

The narrator is an interesting character and in thinking about him/her, I am reminded of my basic Eng. Lit. Crit. seminar: do we trust the narrator? Who is the narrator? Does he/she assume an omnipotent role? I like how we slip in and out of the characters thought processes. I was surprised to slip into the mother's mind. For all the brevity of this book, it covers a lot of emotional ground.

OMG--this is the whole discussion?

I'm almost finished with the book. It's so pretty. I love the descriptions of the landscape and the workings of clocks and the way the falling apart of Howard's dad and George's dad's minds/bodies are worked through in words. The women are stoic and practical.

What happened to the other folk reading this book?

Now I need to see what you guys are reading next! Yikes! And I almost considered Infinite Summer--but I can't quite go there.

Anyways...I'm on to the next post.