Together Alone

Emily, Kay and Celeste have been best friends forever. Their daughters are close, too, but all the girls are off to college now, and the mothers must redefine themselves as women.

Emily, once half of the perfect marriage, hardly knows her workaholic husband Doug anymore. What she wants so badly from him is being offered by her new neighbor, a widower with heart, soul, and grit. Kay, a dedicated teacher, still loves her job, but her husband John is making unfamiliar demands of her, demands that confuse her and make her wonder about their future together.

Celeste, long-divorced, is ecstatic with freedom. She searches for the perfect man, but when her daughter is endangered, her electric new life looks terribly dim. As the most precious parts they've hidden for years suddenly demand to be heard, these three women must learn to love themselves.

A beautiful tapestry of life, love, and acceptance, Barbara Delinsky expertly interweaves these three stories in a glorious work that is at once moving, romantic, and real.

The mix of characters, a dishrag mother, Emily, whose life has been dominated and controlled by her husband, Doug, who has been punishing her for 19 years by abandoning her in the trumped up guise of needing to work extra long hours, days, months, and, naturally it involves excessive traveling. Doug is a rigid jerk who despises and loathes Emily for leaving their son in a car while running into a post office in their small town only to return and find the child gone. His dishonesty with Emily is a real gut wrencher.

There is a cast of good girl friends and a "renter" Brian, who is a cop with a 2 year old left in his care due to his wife dying in an accident. He puts the moves on Emily right away when he sees her husband has literally abandoned her. And she doesn't resist. The plot thickens when Jill, their only surviving child, away in Boston at college, observes her lying, cheating father on the door step of a townhome there embracing a woman and kissing a little boy. Jill lets her mother know in a very oblique way and this leads to the discovery by Emily of the facts.

Emily finally gets the guts to remedy the problem, yet it is very hard to identify with her in a truly sympathetic way especially after the desperately dependent Emily starts cheating with the renter Brian while her husband is away. Two wrongs do NOT make a right no matter how justified the author wants us to believe. Especially since this is a morality tale and the immorality of the characters cancels its impact.

There are enough subplots to keep the most demanding reader
engaged. I hated her self pity and morose self absorption. I really hated her betrayal of her marriage BEFORE she discovers her husband's cheating. It was very jarring and I wish the author had introduced Brian late in the story, after the unmasking of the duplicity of Doug to make it, perhaps, more decent. Otherwise it is a story of two cheating spouses grieving over a lost child. The ending is a non event. The crazy old neighbor woman Myra is not at all believable and in fact is massively annoying. To find that she has harbored the secret of the lost child's death is just too far fetched. But, the fact of the missing children theme is educational and well meant.


Enjoyed Every Minute!   July 8, 2003
 3 out of 4 found this review helpful

I loved the story and the characters. Excellent buy.


One of the BEST stories I've read in a while!!   August 5, 2002
 4 out of 6 found this review helpful

Oh, what can I say. Barb Delinsky has done it again. This book grabs you right from the beginning and doesn't let you go. You feel like you know the characters personnally. You don't want the book to end. You will even shed a few tears at the shocking ending. EXCELLENT!!