Inland, Dreaming of Waves

Is One Thing Ever True?

I've been having novel cravings lately, mostly because I've been catching up on reading short stories. So I treated myself to One True Thing by Anna Quindlen, which I read this past weekend. I read pretty fast, so almost 400 pages didn't take that long, but I'll bet in six months I'll hardly remember what it's about. That's the downside of being a fast reader.

Anyway, it was about a career-girl kind of daughter who goes to care for her mother who is dying of liver cancer. In a way it was a great story: the characters were well drawn, and they stayed true to themselves but changed just enough to be believable. What I had a problem with were all the speeches about marriage at the end, when the mother is telling her daughter that she knew about her husband's infidelities and his other faults.

Is this a cliché or what? The marriage-is-hard-but-your-whole-life-gets-tied-up-in-your-family gig? So you can't ever leave. If that's the case, then what causes our 50% divorce rate? I didn't notice the husband in this story giving up any dreams...just the wife. I guess I'm sick of that argument because it seems to be applied to female characters a lot more than male ones.

posted by Price of Silence @ 9:16 PM