Three elderly friends have gathered over a weekend before Christmas at the beach house owned by their recently deceased friend Sylvie. Sylvie''s partner has asked them to clear the cottage in preparation for its sale.

The friends are so different it's difficult to see how their apparently life-long friendship has flourished. There's Adele, an aging and somewhat vain actress who now in her old age is having a difficult time finding parts. She is suffering financially, and relies on the kindness of her friends to get by. Jude is a practical, take-charge, officious, and somewhat overbearing restaurant owner. She is waiting to spend a week with her long-time married lover, and only in his presence does she feel alive. Wendy is a widowed former hippy and current college professor and well-known public intellectual. Nevertheless she cowers in the face of Jude's disapproval of her sloppiness. Against Jude's wishes she has brought her elderly dog Finn with her, a dog whose senility and physical ailments Wendy is refusing to acknowledge.

I thought I would enjoy this book much more than I did. I thought that there was an overemphasis on the litany of crud these ladies had to go through in the laundry room, pantry, etc. I became a bit bored. No treasures here. And I read that the author did some research in order to write about older women and get into the heads of her characters. I was expecting lots of musing of the philosophical issues we tend to come to consider as we get older--What's it all about? Is this all there is? etc. Instead there was lots about creaky knees and whether I can get up off the floor without groaning. A bit of that sort of thing is true to life, but this was a bit too prevalent.

So, it was an okay book, but not one I'd necessarily recommend.

2 1/2 stars ( )

Das war jetzt nicht so meins - drei ältere Frauen, die nach dem Tod der vierten im Bunde deren Haus ausräumen und dabei feststellen, dass die Dynamik ihrer Freundschaft sich mit deren Fehlen verändert hat. Klang vom Klappentext her erst einmal interessant, hat dann aber doch nicht viel mehr als klischeehafte Charaktere zu bieten, deren Probleme eher oberflächlich abgehandelt werden. Das Ende ist dann vage und nicht zufriedenstellend.

Ich habe es zu Ende gelesen, da es ein eher dünnes Buch ist, bin aber nicht unbedingt motiviert, mehr von der Autorin zu lesen. ( )

Well, it looks like people either love this book or hate it! It's a short book about 3 friends in their 70s who have lost an important member of their group. They're meeting at her beach house to clean it out out before it is sold and spend one last Christmas in the house. Without the presence of Sylvie everything shifts and the remaining three must decide how their very long friendship will continue to go on...or not. ( )

Only read it bec it was a gift. Dragging on for a long time and then the last 5 minutes was finally interesting ( )

Not every book is good for everyone. This is one of them. I liked the first few pages and after that, I was disengaged. Three friends get together at the house of another friend that died. There's also a dog that is mentioned - a lot - in the book. I was glad to get to the last page. ( )