Author, Elizabeth Berg writes in her acknowledgements that her editor at Random House said, "I need an Arthur in my life." Berg agreed with her and so do I. As I was reading this fabulous novel there were two thoughts running through my mind; I would love to have an Arthur of my own and I hope that I can be an Arthur to someone else in my life.
The plot of this book is a simple one of love lost and love found. We first meet three characters who are suffering from loneliness and loss in their lives. Each has loved someone who is not apart of their life in the present. It has left them trying to find ways to cope with that loss.
Arthur has recently lost his wife, the love of his life to death. He goes to the cemetary everyday at lunch time and eats his sandwich while talking to Nola's grave. He imagines her there and listening to him. He also seems to have an ability to stand by any gravestone and imagine the person who is buried there and what their life was like before they died.
Next door, lives Lucille, who lives in the home she grew up in. Her high school boyfriend married another woman and she never found another relationship. She has lived alone all these years.
Maddy Harris, is about to graduate from high school. She has had a rough time at school, bullied by the other students. Her escape has been to spend time in the cemetary taking pictures. She does not have a good relationship with her father, who like her is lost after the death of her mother.
As these three characters' lives start to intersect they also find salvation in each other. Slowly their relationships build into friendship and trust. They find in each other what they have not been able to create in any of their other interactions. In the end they find compassion and are able to turn their friendship into the perfect kind of family. Ignoring age differences they all find happiness in their shared experience.
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