Book Annotation-Women’s Lives and Relationships

Author: Elizabeth Berg

Title: Home Safe

Genre: Women’s Lives and Relationships

Publication Date: 2009

Number of Pages: 260

Geographical Setting: Chicago, IL

Time Period: The Oughties

Series: NA

Subject Headings: Widows, Mothers and daughters, Parent and adult child, Psychological fiction, Domestic fiction

Appeal Terms: Character-driven, Amusing, Bittersweet, Heartwarming

Plot Summary:

It’s been nearly a year since Helen Ames lost her husband, Dan, the love of her life, her financial planner, handyman, and provider who’s steady income allowed Helen to pursue and achieve the best-selling author status that she now enjoys.  Dan’s industry has left Helen little financial worries, though she’s afraid she may never be able to write again, until a tense call from her accountant informs her that the nearly million dollars the Ames’ had stowed away together had suffered an $850,000 withdrawal by Dan several months before his death.  Helen’s thoughts immediately imagine another woman, a second family, or a gambling problem, but she is comforted by her adult daughter, Tessa’s, unshaking faith in her father as a man of unimpeachable integrity.  Eventually the money will surface, Helen feels fairly sure, but she is unable to imagine the form or challenges it will bring with it.  Helen also knows she is going to have to learn to stand on her own more now and allow her friends, neighbors, and Tessa the opportunity of pursuing their own paths through life.

Berg’s book makes the strong appeal to readers’ emotions early on with the death of Helen’s husband Dan that identifies this novel strongly with the genre or Women’s Lives and Relationships (Saricks, 2009).  The novel also exhibits another strong element of its genre in the network of relationships that support Helen with scenes involving three generations of women in her family (her mother, Eleanor, and daughter, Tessa), conversations with her best-friend, Midge, and professional relationships (and rivalries) with other female authors (Saricks, 2009).  The tone is thoughtful and full of images of home and reconciliation with, as Saricks points out, a “hopeful” ending (2009).  One of the last elements that indicates Berg’s novel’s genre is the leisurely pace, a hallmark of books of Women’s Lives and Relationships (Saricks, 2009).

Fiction Read-Alikes:

PS, I Love You by Cecelia Ahern

Sharing the appeal factors of Amusing, Bittersweet, and Heartwarming with Berg’s novel, this book concerning Women’s Lives and Relationships deals in similar plot details of the loss of a spouse and learning what to do with that spouse’s legacy.  In Berg’s book the spousal legacy takes a very inadvertent, though concrete form while in Ahern’s book the spousal legacy seems to be more deliberate and goal-oriented.  Both of these novels are leisurely-paced and character-driven, and though the protagonists are quite different in age, Berg’s Helen is 59 and Ahern’s Holly is 29, there is plenty of emotional connection for readers of any age.

The First Time by Joy Fielding

Sharing the subject of Mothers and Daughters and the location, Chicago, IL, this novel of Women’s Lives and Relationships focuses, rather than on the life change event of a spouse’s sudden passing, on the break in a marriage after a husband’s infidelity and a wife, Mattie’s, diagnosis with ALS.  A theme of reconciliation runs deeply through Fielding’s novel, not only relationally between husband and wife and daughter, but also, like Berg’s novel, in a larger perspective of characters coming to grips with the new shape of their lives.

Milk Glass Moon by Adriana Trigiani, Big Stone Gap Book 3

Berg’s novel was so “gentle” that this Gentle Read by Trigiani dealing with a mother watching her daughter move into being an adult and weathering the possible mid-life crisis of her husband could be a shoo-in for readers.  Character-Driven and Heartwarming are appeal factors shared by the two books along with the domestic network of female characters common to the genre Women’s Lives and Relationships.

Nonfiction Read-Alike:

Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives by Becky Aikman

In this story of a group of widows reimagining and playing out what widowhood can be for women is captured the conciliatory and character-driven nature of Berg’s novel.  Sharing the appeal factor of Bittersweet with Berg’s novel, Aikman, also a writer, follows her own journey along with the five other widows in her Saturday night club through the cycle of grief.

Work Cited:

Saricks, J. (2009). The Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.