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- General fiction - |
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Until The Real Thing Comes Along |
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U ntil The Real Thing Comes Along byElizabeth Berg Random House (Ballantine Books) 214 pages, 2000 ISBN 034543739X Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart Read our review of Open House At thirty-six, Patty Ann Murphy’s biological clock is ticking loudly. She wants a husband and a baby. And not necessarily in that order. While she wants a baby, anybody’s baby, there is only one man with which she desires to spend the rest of her life. Elizabeth Berg’s 1999 hit, Until The Real Thing Comes Along, is now out in paperback. Berg speaks directly to the heart of any woman who longs for a child. She captures precisely the obsession with weakening eggs, the fresh, sweet smell of a child’s skin, and the ability of seemingly every woman around her being able to capture a husband and conceive. Patty’s basic hypothesis about life is that "if you’re an artist, you can achieve that. If you are not an artist, you believe that having children is the closest you’ll come." She has had a few men in her life, but she could never bring herself to marry any of them because of Ethan Allen Gaines. Ethan has been her Prince Charming since they met in sixth grade. Patty has been hopelessly in love with him since he defended her on the playground. They became best friends and remain so until this day. Always there to console each other over new loves that don’t work out, often eating dinner together and going out. Patty even has a pair of his socks that she wears when she’s totally depressed. They tried to have a serious relationship when they were in their late twenties and even went so far as to get engaged. Then Ethan broke it off when he realized that he was hopelessly, irrevocably gay. Patty’s love for Ethan is never more revealing than it is in this flashback: "He took me out to dinner to a very nice place to break off our engagement and told me it was because he was gay. ‘Oh, Ethan,’ I said, ‘that’s okay, I’ll marry you anyway…’ Ethan nodded and looked away. And then back at me. And I knew that was the end of that. Knew it in my head, anyway. The heart is always a different matter." Patty launches a mission to talk Ethan into having a baby with her anyway. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, Until The Real Thing Comes Along gets right to the core of the situation. Berg has the ability to write with poignancy and humor about a woman’s heart. |
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