Evening

Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing and Beautifully Written Story
Review: Susan Minot writes a compelling story. Ann Lord is a woman at the end of her life. She is bedridden with cancer and through her pain and drug induced sleep we are allowed into her mind and her memories. Ann has had a full life with several husbands and five children. Throughout it all she feels that a piece of her is missing. Her heart was given to a man she met at a friend's wedding many years before. For Ann, he was her soul mate. She is devastated and broken hearted when the truth of his situation is revealed to her. She carries on with her life but is never the same. She is emotionally crippled for life. This is obvious in her other memories when she really doesn't come across as a truly loving mother or wife.

The stream of consciousness manner in which Ann's story is told is confusing at times but well worth the effort. The writing is beautiful and evokes much emotion in the reader. I found it almost heart wrenching to even read. I truly felt for this character. So many of us live with the memory of the one that got away...for Ann it was all consuming. In the end, we can only hope that she has found the peace that has evaded her all of her life.

A wonderful writer not to be overlooked.

Rating:
Summary: Loved this book!
Review: I agree with the writer from Burnaby, B.C. As one who has sat by a bedside and watched a parent die, this book was incredibly evocative and realistic. I found myself crying several times from the memories that her writing stirred in me.

I truly loved this book. It was among the best novels I have read in years. It was beautifully written; lyrical, poetic and expressive. Minot was able to bring back the feelings of lost love, and of that first moment when two eyes meet and electrically connect. Anyone who has loved and lost someone -- whether it be a parent, or an unrequited love -- will find truth in this novel. I truly understood and could relate to the main character (Ann Lord), and maybe that is why I loved this novel so much. I would highly recommend this book. I will keep this on my shelf, long after I have recycled the novels that have been recommended to me through "Oprah's Book Club."

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read!
Review: Stunning in its depth and honest portrayal of very *human* relationships, this novel will touch just about anyone. None of the characters are perfect, and in their inperfection-- Minot reveals their true beauty. Honestly one of the best reads I've ever had, I highly recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: An Evening to Remember...
Review: After spending a couple of years on my bookshelf, I was finally tempted to read this novel. Evening is unlike anything I've ever read before. The prose is not clear-cut, with ramblings and confusion throughout the entire novel, but once readers get into the flow of the story, this morphine-induced reality-versus-fantasy begins to take shape. Evening tells the story of Ann Lord, a 65-year-old cancer patient on the verge of death. Family and friends take vigil at her bedside, and through the haze and confusion of Ann's heavily sedated mind are many ramblings about unconnected things, short memories that pass through in an instant then quickly dissolve. Only one thing remains sharp in Ann's mind: the weekend she spent at her best friend's wedding and the man she met there with whom she fell in love. Harris Arden was not just a weekend fling, he became the pivotal moment in Ann's life from which love, loss, hope and reality begin. Susan Minot's stunning, eloquent prose writes of a love story between Ann and Harris; a life story involving Ann's three husbands and her five children; and a death story of the final moments of a woman's life and those things that can never be left behind. Choppy at times, confusing at others, but this unique writing style creates an authentic other world where consciousness slips between reality and dreams. Excellent and powerful; a vivid portrayal of the end of a life.

Rating:
Summary: A complex work of fiction
Review: Susan Minot's Evening is a wonderful and complex work of fiction. Minot contructs an internal dialogue in the mind of her protagonist, Ann Lord, during the last days of her life. An ephemeral blend of memory, dream, and recontruction, Lord's reflection of her own life consumes the reader in hypnotic waves. Minot expertly crafts vignettes that crackle and ignite as the reader pieces them together. Adrift within the semi-consciousness of Ann Lord, the reader wades through 40 years of memory, including three marriages and a bittersweet love affair during a weekend wedding in Maine.

This is not an easy book. The reading is laborious, but once the reader is absorbed, he or she will be infected and delighted by Minot's style. To achieve the hazy indistinction between past and present, Minot omits punctuation, most notably quotation marks which allows the reader to slip in and out of Lord's memory without a filter. Lord's recollection of the wedding weekend is disrupted by occurrences in the present and the infusion of other memories. Thus, the reader learns about Lord's life bit by bit, fading in and out of the ebb and flow of dreamlike sequences and flashes of memory.

Overall, Minot's writing is fluid and elegant- her scenes rich with emotion. Minot is quite successful in creating an intimate narrative of the last days of a woman's life without falling into melodrama.

Rating:
Summary: Elegiac and Elegant, Beautifully Written
Review: Most of the people I know didn't like EVENING; they told me they simply couldn't "get into it." I loved the novel and, in some ways, I'm a little surprised I did. EVENING centers around an upper middle class (or lower upper class) matron who is very much a WASP. As a Roman Catholic European, I found it a little difficult to identify with the milieu portrayed in EVENING, but I think the emotions it portrays are universal and, of course, therein lies its power.

EVENING is the story of sixty-five-year-old Ann Lord, a widow and cancer victim who now lies dying in her large home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As Ann prepares for death, she also revisits her youth, in particular, one life altering summer in 1954 when Ann was but twenty-five-years-old. The narrative of sixty-five-year-old Ann intertwines and intersects with that of twenty-five-year-old Ann and it does so beautifully. I adore parallel/intertwining narratives and stories-within-stories, so I was pretty much hooked on EVENNG simply because of its narrative structure alone.

The early story centers on Ann's participation in the wedding her friend, Lily Wittenborn on an island off the coast of Maine. Anyone who's ever attended one of these lavish affairs will know Minot has captured its essence perfectly. We know trouble is brewing, however, when Lila's younger sister, Gigi, has a motorboat accident and is rescued by Harris Arden, a friend of the groom's. Although both Gigi and Harris emerge from the water unscathed, it's a bad sign and we know there's more trouble yet to come. And, Minot doesn't let us down. As Ann falls hopelessly in love with Harris, the wedding weekend heads toward not one, but two, tragedies that will change the life of Ann forever.

Woven through the story of the wedding weekend like a bright silver thread, is the story of Ann's impending death. Her thoughts are sometimes difficult to follow because her mind is always clouded by either pain or morphine or memories and, sometimes, by all three.

Ann Lord isn't a particularly sympathetic protagonist and I felt little empathy with her or sympathy for her. She's been a very privileged wife and mother and that's about it. She's not particularly likable or interesting and she doesn't even care if she is or if she isn't. Minot, however, let's us see so deeply into Ann's world that she become more and more fascinating with each page. Even in the midst of death, Minot succeeds wonderfully in bringing Ann Lord to life.

All writers and most readers, I think, are people in love with language and its power. EVENING is written in clean, spare prose, yet it is so elegiac and elegant. At times, I found it almost heartbreakingly beautiful. And, thank goodness, Minot didn't feel the need to explain everything to her readers. She writes with a quiet grace and assurance that is definitely the mark of an accomplished novelist whether it's his or her first book or thirtieth. EVENING'S energy is definitely derived from its "early" story, its grace and power from its later one.

I thought EVENING was a beautiful book that's gracefully and beautifully written. I would certainly recommend it to all lovers of literary fiction of the highest quality.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful take on memory and thought processes
Review: I'd been reading about this book for months but hesitated to pick it up because I wasn't interested in the genre. But it ended up being an amazing and enchanting reading experience. Most compelling were Minot's depictions of the thoughts and feelings of a dying woman. Anne's jumbled memory and seemingly random and trailing thoughts were somehow more lucid and insightful than anything I'd ever read. I could relate to the way she was repeatedly injected with happiness/remorse as snapshots emerged from the past (expressed in a straightforward fatalistic melancholy tone)even though I'm only 25 years old. Not sure if men would enjoy this book as much as women, but I would definitely highly reccomend it.

Rating:
Summary: A story of unrequited love???
Review: My take on Evening was different from many of the other reviews I read. This, to me, was definitely not a beautiful romance about two people who were meant for each other but could not be together. Rather, to me this was a sad story of a woman who had a short, passionate affair (not love) with a loser and then perceived the rest of her life as anticlimatic (no pun intended). First of all, she was not in love with this guy. One weekend of sex is not love. Second of all, this guy was a loser. He was engaged to marry another woman. We don't know for sure if this was the first time he had cheated on her (although one time is enough to show poor character), but there are hints throughout the book that it was not (for example, various characters refer to him as a womanizer). Even if Maria had not been pregnant, it seems certain that he would not have left her, because this affair with Ann did not have the same meaning for him as it had for her. For her, it was a life altering experience, for him, a fling. He says, "He could not be certain about this new woman. After the brightness faded who know what would happen, he hardly know her." He was actually the more level headed, realistic one of the two- after all, they had good sex one weekend. Does that make a great love? Of course not. What I liked most about this book was that the author succeded in creating an interesting story out of quite unlikable characters. Ann, in her dying moments, cares more about one weekend forty years ago than spending time with her children? And yet as the reader you don't really dislike her, you more pity her and wish peace for her at death. Very complex characters, very interesting writing style, very satisfying story.

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical, deliberately confusing at times, wonderful always
Review: On her deathbed, drifting in and out of lucidity and clear thinking as the level of morphine in her system ebbs and flows, Ann Lord remembers her life's highlights and tries one last time to make sense of all that has happened since the pivotal summer of her life: the summer she met Harris Arden and had a brief but life-changing affair with him. To sound trite, it was clear they were meant for each other. Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that they didn't not marry and live happily ever after. In spite of what might seem to others a full life filled with the usual ups and down, successes and tragedies, Ann never again experiences the love she felt for Harris.
Heartbreak, pathos, love, memory, aching pain, and soaring passion - all come back in bits and pieces as Ann's deathbed vigil plays itself out. Beautiful writing throughout, the quality of which Susan Minot has come to be known for.
Exquisite book.

Rating:
Summary: Evening Stars
Review: Minot, in Evening, tells the story about life, not death. It is the story of Ann Lord's life in Anne's mind, as she loses and regains consciousness over the time she is dying. She sees her life before her...and through her dying eyes, the reader's mind is living her life. And we see that what might look like a lovely life -- three marriages, success, children - may hide secret desires and hold dark tragedy in the evening darkness. But it seems as though nothing in her life was so clear -- except for Harris Arden, the man always out of her reach. The story is very honest and gives the reader a vivid description of what could be a reality, as Ann is not an extraordinary human being, and at the same time her life is as extraordinary as any individual's. She remembers the highlights of her life. "Bits of things swam to her, but what made them come? Why, for instance, did she remember the terrace at Versailles where she'd visited only once, or a pair of green and white checkered gloves or a photo of city trees in the rain?" Humans attach meaning to things, and Ann seemed to only find meaning in Harris Arden and the pain of losing a child. Evening is a beautifully woven story that explores the brutal reality of human life and death; love and loss; never reaching the things you think you want most. We are touched by her realization that "everything passed, she would too. This perspective offered her an unexpected clarity she nearly enjoyed, but even with this new clarity the world offered no more explanation for itself than it ever had." Our world is so inexplicable and there are so many questions left unanswered. The only thing that remains the same is the sun rising and setting, as the evening stars fill the sky in an orderly fashion. The story of Ann's life is told so beautifully that it reminds me of a fallen star, so beautiful full of awe.