Rating: 
Summary: There is beauty in simplicity...
Review: That's what Elizabeth Berg does best. She takes the mundane things in life, the normalcy, and she changes it around, to help us remember what we saw once, as well. In this new book, Say When, it opens with a wife and husband, Griffin and Ellen, where the husband has found out that his wife is in love with someone else, and she wants to leave him. To me, this is news enough, because I always feel as though Im reading about the husband doing this to the wife. Needless to say, Griffin is not happy with the separation. He seems to be a character who is happier when married. The twist on it is, is that no one wants to leave the house. The one thing that they seem to have in common, is the great love they have for their eight year old daughter, Zoe. From then on, they try to reside in the same household peacefully, but, instead, they have much anger and resentment toward one another. I noticed that Griffin, like many others in relationships, thought that everyone was happy and satisfied. Instead, he never realized how unhappily married she had become. She used a great metaphor, "I think our marriage was like a house we stopped using. I mean, you know, you move in, and there are all these terrific rooms, .... and you end up being in the same two rooms all the time... We got swallowed up by a domestic routine that didn't leave room for us as the individuals we are." I think the good thing about Griffin, was that he found satisfaction within himself, so that, if she ever did come back, he would know that he was being with her for the right reasons, not because he didn't want to be alone. There is a lot of deconstruction of people and what keeps them togther and pulls them apart. There are a lot of memories and nostalgia so you get to know who you are reading about, wonderful descriptions of people so you feel you can see them, and it was a very quick read. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This was a fascinating book in many ways. I love Berg's writing and I liked many things about this book, but I couldn't rate it higher because I didn't believe in these people. I liked Frank and I felt bad for him, but I wanted to smack him for allowing Ellen to indulge her immature behavior. And I wanted to shake her for being so immature and self-centered and selfish. On the plus side, even a less-than-wonderful book by Berg is better than the best other writers can produce. Still, I'd recommend waiting for the paperback before plunking down a big chunk of cash for the hardcover.
Rating:
Summary: Just wish that I had liked Ellen....
Review: When Ellen has an affair and wants a divorce, Griffin is (dishonestly) surprised. Zoe, the pampered and loved child is all that matters any more. As the marriage unravels at the seams, the reader is permitted insight into the whys and hows this came to be: "the catalogue of intentional slights, his moments of soft cruelty, his awareness of complicity in creating a relationship that could not work". An unsympathetic wife who is shy and difficult to know, a husband who is passively content and unwilling to see his own lack of contribution. When Griffin refuses to move, the marriage moves on to a "roommate: situation and the two alternate nights out. Ellen goes to her lover and Griffin finds himself employed as Santa and having a couple of dates. Watching lives spiral off and become unrecognizable, the hindsight required to see what really was good and what might not have been - the early contentedness moving onto complacency and becoming contempt. Ms. Berg paints a multilayered picture in this sadly compelling insight of what really does go wrong.
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