Edie Richter is Not Alone

Powerfully poignant. The author manages to convey Edie's reluctance to be the main character in this drama, but she is propelled there by circumstances she could never have foreseen. Her father is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers and it hits him quickly and forcefully. She and her husband Oren (who is a great supporting and supportive character) relocate from NY to CA to be closer and help her mother and her much younger sister, Abby. The change in and the care for her father are excruciating, but the author's tone helps to alleviate the suffering with some humor. Edie's reaction to the illness and his subsequent death are intense, but it's been clear she is pretty good at suppressing emotion, so she defects to that mode and buries show more everything. An opportunity for Oren to move to Australia for work gives Edie the perfect physical distance from her family tragedy - the emotional distance she can provide herself. Only, she learns that all the baggage comes with her, literally. "I thought that life was about moving from one thing to another, all the previous things falling down behind you, but I was beginning to see that this was not the case at all. That in fact every action, every thought, and every word uttered, they all stayed with you and formed a sort of jumbled collage.....Dad once told me, while tweezing a splinter out of my big toe, that you could never describe something while it was in the process of occurring. That only afterward would you find the words." (122) in the dark humorous vein of the story, a difficult neighbor, a locally famous smarmy real estate agent, and a dead possum finally force things to a head that allows Edie to break through her emotional wall and confront the situation surrounding her father's death. The prologue and epilogue and its use of second person bracket the main narrative in a way that allows us a little distance too, though joining Edie for the majority felt like an honor. show less