Ellyn Bache

Brightwood Trace, a neighborhood in suburbia similar to many others of its kind all over the country, is home to a diverse group of women who remain friends despite the fact that they are five very different people. But when Paisley, the life of the party and the glue that holds all five of them together, falls ill with terminal cancer, each of the women must find the strength to stick with Paisley through the worst of the worst. And in the process, each one of these women begins to look at show more her life in a whole new light.

I hate that I have to write this review in the honest way that I write all reviews. Because I wanted to like this book, I desperately did. I love novels that revolve around a group of female friends. I love novels about the every day aspects of life – the daily mundane stuff and the not-so-fun stuff like when the best person in the book gets cancer and it’s terminal. Everything about The Art of Saying Goodbye told me I would love it. But I didn’t. And here is where I will attempt to pinpoint why.

What it boils down to is the characters. I didn’t connect with any of them in a real way. I even had trouble for the first half of the book telling them each apart! Which is not a good thing. Once I figured out each of their personalities and began to separate each one from the rest, I realized that I didn’t really like them as people. They each seemed so selfish to me, in different ways and to different degrees, but they were each selfish for sure. And not selfish in the endearing, flawed character that you love anyway kind of way. They were just plain not supportive of their friend who was going through the most difficult thing a person can imagine. I didn’t understand how they (with the exception of one of them, Andrea) could call themselves Paisley’s good friends.

The other thing I wasn’t a huge fan of is that I felt that the summary provided by the publisher isn’t quite accurate. To me, it didn’t feel like any of these women made any significant transformative changes in their thinking or behaviors based on Paisley’s cancer. Sure, there were small changes, but certainly nothing earth-shattering. I guess I was just expecting more bombshells dropped or huge life events to take place and the whole novel felt sort of anti-climactic. I’m not sure how else to explain it.

I did not hate this book. I finished it, which is certainly telling – I enjoyed it enough to keep reading despite my misgivings. However, I have read many other books that revolve around a group of women and their friendships that I enjoyed quite a bit more than this one. So while it’s not the worst book ever, The Art of Saying Goodbye was not one I much enjoyed. show less

“Odd, how in the afterglow of someone else’s life, your own looks so much brighter.”

This line from Ellyn Bache’s new novel The Art of Saying Goodbye (William Morrow, 2011), gives you a sense of the glowing feel you will gather from this artful novel.

In the novel, golden girl Paisley suddenly learns she has a late stage cancer. It is unthinkable, and throughout the course of the novel, we see the women who know Paisley re-examining their own lives, revealing secrets and shames, and show more finding new footing in this redefined world. Instead of a book of darkness and mourning, the author has created a book that is at once real and luminescent, where the characters look beyond sadness to a fuller view of their interlinked worlds.

Bache (whose short story collection The Value of Kindness won the Willa Cather Fiction Prize) has built this novel with a series of chapters that each feel like a perfect little short story all their own. Her writing craft shines, and I found myself eager to pick up the book again and again, feeling that each chapter was a gift I gave to myself to savor. Give this book to yourself and others, and enjoy! Highly recommended. show less

This was a book that I really liked although I was not sure that I would. I thought it might be a bit too morbid but it was a beautiful story.The story has been built around an experience in the author's life. It concerns the women of Brightwood Trace one of whom (Paisley) has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and is fading fast so we know the end of the story. She is the leader of the group, the bright and vivacious one that all the others look too. Each of her friends gets to tell part show more of the story and fill in some of their background, even Paisley. Each of them reacts to Paisley's illness in their own way and in relation to where they are in their life. As Paisley gets to tell a little of her story we see the influence she has had on all the others. I could relate to the characters, and I loved some of the little detailed experiences told in the story. Well worth a read show less

With a title like that, there's no way this book could have been anything but depressing. Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed the dynamics of the neighbors and their relationships with each other as well as in their own families. I think the author meant for there to be more goodbyes in the story, but those weren't brought out as much as the main goodbye to Paisley, who was dying of cancer. Andrea was saying goodbye to the town where she grew up and her fear of her daughter's illness. Iona was show more saying goodbye to bitterness caused by her husband's death and her infertility, all the while being healed by a baby she wasn't related to and didn't expect to love. Ginger was saying goodbye to jealousy and sadly some of the trust in her marriage. Julianne was saying goodbye to her understandable anxiety of being able to sense a patient's apparent demise through her fingertips. Although there was a little too much going on, the story centered on Paisley and her daughters and how she affected all of these women in profound ways, both good and bad. I found myself with hot tears on my face as I neared the end of this book, so it was definitely written in a real and effective manner. show less