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Book Reviews of Evenings at Five

Evenings at Five
Evenings at Five
Author: Gail Godwin
ISBN-13: 9780345461025
ISBN-10: 0345461029
Publication Date: 4/1/2003
Pages: 128
Rating:
  • Currently 3.2/5 Stars.
 15

3.2 stars, based on 15 ratings
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Type: Hardcover
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

4 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

DaisyaDay avatar reviewed Evenings at Five on + 10 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
Wonderful novella of the marraige of two artists and the death of one of them. Heartwarming without being melodramatic. Line drawings of spaces in their home enhance the story.
Bonnie avatar reviewed Evenings at Five on + 422 more book reviews
A novella really, snippets of memories and bits of life now, without one's spouse and the shared evening rituals. There are lovely line drawings throughout, each depicting the theme of the chapter and that part of the widow's grief. I don't know if this book would help or hurt one who has lost a beloved spouse. But I have gifted other books on the loss of a mate and each time was told how much it helped to hear others who understood perfectly this kind of deep grief.
That said, I have read other Godwin's books and thought them more solid. (It was so difficult finding a way to describe the difference without sounding cold.)
reviewed Evenings at Five on + 1452 more book reviews
A story about a couple whose favorite time was their cocktail hour together at five p.m. From this poin the story moves one coping with grief when one dies. It's a happy tale until this event that turns sad. She revels in the memories about what they shared together, feels guilt about their disagreements and that she wasn't by his side when he left this earth. Yes, it's hard for the the one left behind who must find a way to develop a new life.

Well written, it's a realistic tale about the end of life, how retirement develops, learning to cope with the frailities of later life and finally, living with declining health that ends in death. Realistic, this is little look provides much food for thought.

Robert Louis Stevenson sums it best: The changes wrought by death are in themselves so sharp and final, and so terrible and melancholy in their consequences, that the thing stands alone in man's experience, not a received condition, and has no parallel on earth. ("Aes Triplex)
harmony85 avatar reviewed Evenings at Five on + 982 more book reviews
A cute little hardcover; a poignant story.