RfP Wednesday -- One True Thing by Anna Quindlen

As you can imagine, I haven't been Reading for Pleasure as much as I was before school started, but I'm still getting some in. I have started reading One True Thing by Anna Quindlen. Mrs. Jogger and I rented the movie, with Meryl Streep, William Hurt, and Renee Zellweger, a couple of weeks ago. It was a pretty good movie, and I think it's an even better book.

The story is about a young woman and her complicated and often painful relationship with her parents, and how that plays out as her mother dies of cancer. The characters are very well-written, and achingly familiar. It sometimes makes me squirm to read it. Having seen the movie, I know that there really aren't going to be any easy answers, and I suspect the book will be even less rosy than the movie.

I can't help wonder how much this book was inspired by Quindlen's real life. The main character is a young and ambitious New York writer. Her name, Ellen Gulden, even seems to be a cognate of Quindlen's. I don't suppose it really matters. The real question is whether I believe it, not whether it's true. But that's the sort of thing that I seem to like to dwell on.

I'm not very far into the book, nor am I going very fast at this point. So next week's RfP Wednesday might be another installment on the same book, or I might have to go back and drag up a favorite that I'm not reading now, but that I wish to recommend.