Ordinary Life: Stories

by Elizabeth Berg

Book Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - "An extraordinary short story collection that deserves our closest attention."--Detroit Free Press "Elizabeth Berg's gift as a storyteller lies most powerfully in her ability to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679437460
• ISBN13: 9780679437468
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Ordinary Life is anything but ordinary... :)

I am not normally a fan of short stories. I have tried to read them for years and I can't get into them. The stories never seem to sum up a point, it feels like as soon as I start getting into it, it ends! The only reason I tried this one is because I have read a few of her books and loved them. I read this book in two days! I had to keep coming back to it! Some of my favorites: The first story "Ordinary Life: a Love Story" gets you right off the bat because the main character locks herself in the bathroom for a week! It's as almost if everyday life is too loud sometimes and the only way you can think is to shut yourself out from it for a while. A seventy-nine year old woman does this and her husband thinks that she has gone crazy. She just sits back, relaxes, and thinks about her life.. her marriage, her children, her sister that died of breast cancer. Memories plague her and she gets the relaxation she needs. The third story in this collection is called "Things We Used to Believe" This is about a women Martha, who spends her time with a male best friend. "She thinks sometimes that she would like to marry him, but she is already severely married." This story got me.. how many times have I been with someone, wondering what it would be like to be with someone else, someone you are close to, but never attempted a relationship. (though I am not married) One of my favorite lines: "They get up, and she sees that his sneakers are huge. She understands that there is much about him that is unfamiliar to her. They start walking toward the lake. They walk to keep from the bedroom, where things would only get more difficult.""Take this Quiz" is the sixth story about a husband and wife who have been together for a while, and the wife wants her husband to take a quiz in a magazine asking, "How Happy are you?" I once attempted something like this by trying to make my ex-boyfriend read "Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus." It didn't work. SPOILER: The most beautiful lines, metaphor in this story, and maybe the whole book in my opinion, was the way she described what happened to them after she was pushing about the quiz. "She is remembering the time she was nine and took apart a jewelry box she loved, to see what made the ballerina turn around. Though she paid careful attention to each step, when she tried to reassemble it, it didn't work the way it had before. No one else could fix it, either.The ballerina stayed in place, permanently turned away, oblivious to the music she had danced to before." There are so many beautiful stories in this book. It's as if Elizabeth Berg takes the small, yet still important things about everyday life and creates descriptions so pure and beautiful, they remind you of the things you miss everyday when you are in such a hurry. Read this book.

Ordinary Life is Extraordinary Reading!

Elizabeth Berg is one of those writers who seldom if ever fails to entice her readers with a good book. Whether she is writing about a woman going through a divorce, Open House, or an adolescent on the brink of her first love, Joy School, to a woman turning 50 and questioning her life(Pull of The Moon), it's as if she writes about the breath and sole of women everywhere. As I've often said a so-so Berg book(which there has only been one in my opinion) is better than most other books.And now Berg offers her readers a new book which contains short stories called Ordinary Life: Stories. And while this may be a genre which man of her readres are not familiar with, it isn't a minutes too soon for them to fall in love with them as I did. I will be the first to admit that while I seldom if ever read short stories, I did find that Berg's writing and her characters, as always, imemdiately beckoned to me, intrigued me and left me sighing for more when I ultimately finished the book.The stories themselves are small vignettes about life and love among ordinary people. But in Berg's hands these peopel are anything but ordinary, quite the oppostie as for us the readers these people become extraodinary. The stories revolve around many of the themes Berg explores in her books. Unconditional love, betrayal, growing up , dealing with an illness but most of all how people affect each other's lives. One can't help but see the similarities between the character of Mavis from the story Life, A Love Story and Nan from Pull of the Moon. And comparisons can also be made betwen the young woman Katie Nash from Durable Goods and the narrator of Matchmaker. Or again between the nurse in Never Change to the nurse in Sweet Revenge. But most of all I was blown away by the relationship between Lizzy and her ill mother in What Stays and couldn't help but think about the story the dauhgters and mother from What We Keep. Finally for Elizabeth Berg readers who loved Pull of the Moon as I did, Berg offers us a glimpse into Martin's thoughts in a very poignant letter he writes to Nan as she travels about during her soul-searching odyssey.Berg is a master of describing the emotional fabric of her characters lives and often gives her readers the impression that she is writing about them. How many times, while reading this author have I wanted to say to her, "You write about me so well and we don't even know one another."If I had any obejctions to this book of short stories it would be that it was over much too quickly. As hard as I tried to read slowly, I couldn't help but gulp down the pages. And like eating a good piece of chocolate, Berg's writings leave me yearning for more.

Berg's Marvelous, Moving Collection

Memories loom large in Elizabeth Berg's remarkable short stories, some of these are so sad that you may have to stop reading midway, and regroup before continuing. Berg's characters are longing for something that has slipped away and cannot be retrieved -- love, family, youth, health, and wholeness. The clock is ticking as the pages turn.Berg, 53, who now lives in Chicago, has worked as a waitress, chicken washer, singer, information clerk, and registered nurse. Her varied background shows in her writing. In "Sweet Refuge" a visiting nurse, who is a caring woman, attends to a 31-year-old man dying of pancreatic cancer. He is angry, embittered, but Abby, his short-term nurse, is gentle, caring, and forgiving when he is harsh. There is joy in caring for the dying, she says, "There are exquisite acts of tenderness lying latent in all of us, waiting only for our permission to come into being."In the vivid title piece, "Ordinary Life: A Love Story," 79-year-old Mavis locks herself in her bathroom for a week. She needs time, uninterrupted time, to remember her inseparable sister, who resembles her, and who has died. Mavis's interactions with her husband, with whom she has never (previously) spent a night apart, are a priceless part of this classic story of incontrovertible devotion. Now, we mustn't all fall completely into a pit of despair so, thankfully, there is at least one touch of comic relief, and it's found in "Regrets Only." Here, Laurence, who is gay, implores his friend Susan to pretend that they are marrying each other, so his mother can die contentedly. When they kiss, the result is worth waiting for.In "What Stays," a loving little girl remembers her mother, a mental patient, who "reached out and connected deeply to a place somewhere between my heart and my stomach." This same phrase can be applied to this marvelous, moving, elegiac collection by Elizabeth Berg.

Ordinary Life Honored

Not always a fan of short stories, I was entranced by the stories in this collection by Elizabeth Berg's. I was hooked, right off the bat, by the first story, "Ordinary Life, A Love Story" and by Mavis' wish that she had more records or photos of things that were just ordinary items in her life. I have been looking at the everyday things and happenings a bit differently since reading that. I loved "Martin's Letter to Nan". In "Pull of the Moon", one of my favorite books of Berg's, Nan leaves on a journey of self-discovery without telling her husband Martin in advance. The book consists of Nan's letters to Martin and her journal entries. The letter referred to in the short story title lets us in on Martin's thinking during the time when Nan was gone. Berg says that she wrote the story because when she meets readers, she is always asked "What was Martin's response?" Another story that I thought was wonderfully done was "One Time at Christmas, in My Sister's Bathroom" which was about a woman who must come to terms with a difficult father. Berg manages to authentically detail her painful attempts to understand her father. Worthwhile reading!

Nothing Ordinary Here

Elizabeth Berg's book of short stories, ORDINARY LIFE, is as good as everything else she has written. I love to read a good short story and was not disappointed with any in this book. She shows us how even an ordinary life can be remarkable, how something as simple as sharing a story, looking in the mirror, or saying a few words at the right time can make our lives extraordinary, even if only for a moment. Elizabeth Berg's world is our world, not one that exists only on soap operas or in the movies. She is one of us and reading her words brings her right into your home where you feel you could welcome her with a cup of tea and some interesting conversation. Perhaps these stories reflect an ordinary life, but they are written exquisitely.