Sherril Jaffe

I REALLY liked this book. For one thing, I LOVE the cover! Look closely to see what's on the baby's bottom.

The blurb for this novel really intrigued me. Protagonist Flora has a dream at age 35 that a heavenly court has set her expiration date - the date of her death - for 25 years later, the year she turns 60. Fast-forward 24 years, to 2004, and Flora wonders if the dream might come true. Thing is, her mother Muriel was present at the heavenly court with other family members who have since show more passed on - and Muriel is very much alive at age 86. Perhaps this means Flora's dream won't become a reality just yet.

This may sound like a morbid subject for a book, but it's not. The book is quite funny and very thought-provoking.

The story moves back and forth between Flora and Muriel. Muriel is recently widowed and trying to adjust, trying to decide what needs to change (where she lives?) and what can change, now that she is not tied down at home caring for her invalid husband. She hates (fears?) being alone and lonely. Flora has a good life, a loving rabbi husband with whom she shares an interest in Zen Buddhism, great sex and heartfelt discussions. Her concerns about her dream come across more as the natural fears and concerns about death (that increase as we age), rather than as some morbid preoccupation.

Muriel and Flora are both extremely likable characters. At age 53 myself, with an 82-year-old mother, I could really relate to this book. I can only hope to be as truly alive as these two women are at their respective ages. There's much to think about here, in living one's life to the fullest.

This is a book that I will encourage my friends to read, and will re-read periodically myself.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This advanced reader edition was sent to me by the publisher and will be passed on to someone else to read.] show less

The Book Report: Flora, daughter of Muriel and wife of Jonah and mother of Lulu, has a dream...she stands in the prisoners' dock in the Cosmic Courtroom hearing her life's ending announced for twenty-five years hence, when her oldest daughter (still in utero at the time of the trial) will be twenty-five, she herself will turn sixty, and her mother will be dead (or else how would her mother be standing there in the Cosmic Courtroom?). She pleads for her life, reminding the Cosmic Court that show more her child will need her, all to no avail. She will die on her sixtieth birthday. Fast forward to Flora's fifty-ninth yer, most of which we spend with her as she obsesses and frets and generally acts like an ass about her upcoming expiration date. She still has her mom, now an 87-year-old widow; her children are grown and gone, now twenty-four and twenty-two; her rabbi husband still desires her, still fascinates her, still makes her toes curl with the joy of their intimacy and vigorous sex life. (Are you hatin' on her yet? I sure am, whiny broad needs a board upside the head, look at all the stuff she's got! Sheez.) Her mother, a selfish woman in Flora's eyes, is boldly starting life anew; her own work as a professor is satisfying but undemanding (loathsome! this woman's LOATHSOME!); her world, in short, is enviably settled into positive grooves. She, however, sees only the onrushing expiration date. She and sexy rabbi Jonah spend the day before her birthday at a meditation retreat in the mountains. She drifts to sleep after a late-night bout of ecstasy-inducing sex (bitch!) and has another dream...the sequel to her first one...and....

That's it. And.

My Review: The book could have been called "Grumpy Old Women." Flora and Muriel have an evolving mother/daughter dynamic, one that makes them feel simultaneously and by turns comforted and angered and annoyed and misunderstood and cherished. They are both lucky and blessed in their men, and they both see themselves as put-upon by the other as well as by their failings as human beings. In short, they're about what you'd expect well-off women at the last stops on the train to be. It's this universality that makes the story fun to read, and the life details that Jaffe endows each woman with are well-chosen to illustrate the more universal and general attitudes and needs that the women have.

For anyone Jewish and female and over 50, this will probably bang you like a gong. I'm only one of those things, and it still managed to bong me a good clip on the family-love spot. But its primary charm, its main selling point, is that the people in it are well and truly family. You the reader are taken into the family. You overhear the phone calls, you peer into the thoughts of these women and see yourself, your mother, your sister. This is a very, very good thing.

What's NOT so good is the book's very close resemblance to a short story that got fat. Dialogue? Little. Plot? Rudimentary, or if we're being polite and positive, spare. It's not *quite* enough for four stars. It's good, and I'd never say *don't* read it, but I will not make a case for spending $28 (!!) for a hardcover of it. How much is the NooKindle version? Under $14? Go for it. show less

Sherril Jaffe’s Expiration Date is a story about mothers and daughters, focusing on an 87-year-old grandmother named Muriel and her relationship with her polar opposite daughters, Daphne and Flora.

One day, twenty-four years ago, Flora had a dream that she would die before she hit sixty years old. As she approaches what she believes to be her final birthday eve, she begins to wonder if her mother, still alive, kicking, playing bridge, traveling and having sex at 87 years old, is staying show more alive to fend off her daughter’s angel of Death. As Muriel lives her second life with, first, her “boyfriend” Wilbur and then her boyfriend Gene, Flora finally begins to see what life past 60 can hold, defying the decree handed down to her so many years before. It’s a kind of coming of age story, but with an unusual age set.

While mostly straightforward, the narrative was somewhat at odds with itself – at once in Flora’s mind, then jumping to Muriel’s almost as if they were the same person in two separate bodies, at different stages of life – which could have been the point. But the jump in perspective is a little unwieldy, as the author seems to side with one over the other.

For example, Muriel is very critical when it comes to just about everyone, especially her daughters. Flora, as a victim of this criticism is a sympathetic character, but Jaffe repeats one specific criticism so often that it seems her point was not to portray Flora as sympathetic but to see her as flawed and in need of her mother’s criticism.

I personally felt affronted by Muriel’s opinions on quality of life and one’s weight and some of the casual jabs at “the other” may have been flippant on the author’s part, but they were no less hurtful. In the end, I believe we’re meant to empathize with Muriel, but I found her cold and unkind. Had the author meant for this to happen, perhaps there would have been some kind of revelatory moment wherein she realizes how callous she can be. Instead, the revelation goes to Flora who is perhaps the one character least in need of an alteration of perspective.

Lauren Cartelli
www.theliterarygothamite.com show less

“Expiration Date” explores the feelings and thoughts about death in every way imaginable. Flora has a dream – but it’s more than a dream, more than a premonition, it’s frighteningly real, the heavenly court that convenes and sets the date of her death. Flora, very happily married and with grown children, learns that she will not reach her 60th birthday, that her “expiration date” is the day before. Flora’s mother Muriel maintains a sound mind and a youthful body for someone show more quickly approaching 90. In contrast to Flora’s blissful marriage, Muriel is widowed during the novel’s events and starts relationships with a few different men as the plots progresses.

In fact, chapters alternate between Flora with her expiration date, and Muriel with her seemingly endless lease on life. Flora considers the implications and the exigencies: as the date approaches, she wonders, will this be the last time I walk with my mother, see the Golden Gate Bridge, make love with my husband? It turns out this is the thrust here, albeit one that grows slowly: Flora stresses, in an oddly calm and circumspect way, about her supposedly imminent death, while Muriel, the mother, compares her various men to her definitely-not-sainted late husband. The constant consideration of death’s many changes dominate this slender book, and they form its backbone, its major chord. This is a Jewish family, and Flora’s husband Jonah is a rabbi. He recounts many stories from the Talmud with regard to the coming of the Angel of Death; Flora considers whether she can trick him by always being on the move, or by changing her name, or by some other means.

For me, this book never tends toward a conclusion; the mother and daughter progress toward imagined ends or intermediate events, and events never gave me an inkling of what to expect. Author Sherril Jaffe keeps us guessing until the very last. This can be considered a virtue, certainly, but I doubt the author intended a thriller climax. She gives us instead a final open-ended thought that summons the Buddhist principles into which she immerses us as she wraps up. Her lesson: death isn’t the point, living each moment is the point. Long-lived Muriel’s story cautions instead of congratulates: carpe diem rather than slave away in a secure but unloving marriage. Flora should be proud after all: she manages to live her life of love with a sense of wonder and gratitude for all that she has.

This story will clearly resonate with those who face the challenge of illness, or who have lost loved ones, and it includes well- and subtly-told lessons on the art not of dying but of living and loving life.

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2011/03/expiration-date-by-sherril-jaffe.html show less