Sandy's Spotlight
BOOK REVIEW
Husbands May Come And Go
But Friends Are Forever
By
Judith Marshall
Book: Husbands May Come And Go But Friends Are Forever
Author: Judith Marshall
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Chick Lit
Length: Approximately 443 Pages
A beautiful book about friendship between women.
I want to preface my review of HUSBANDS MAY COME AND GO BUT FRIENDS ARE FOREVER by JUDITH MARSHALL by stating that this is not a male bashing book. While it does discuss divorce, it also has a wonderful, loving relationship in it.
Elizabeth Reilly-Hayden is a 60-year-old vital woman that is set in her ways. She has a career. She has had the same lover for the last 20 years. She has five friends, Karen, JoAnn, Gidge, Rosie and Arlene, that she's had since high school. These women are her family. Throughout the years, they've each been there for the others when crisis arises in their lives. Like family, these women all have different personalities that sometimes causes conflict within the group and between each other, but they always work through it and are always there for each other because of the deep loving bond they have for each other.
Elizabeth is not a person that likes change. In the spring of 2000, she is faced with two life altering events that sends her into a deep depression. While going through this, Elizabeth retreats into herself and ignores calls and attempts from her friends to help. She just needs time by herself to sort through everything that has happened. While trying to deal with these life changing events on her own, she receives a call that Karen, the linchpin of her group of friends, whom I would also call the matriarch of the group as well as her best friend, has been killed in a motorcycle accident. Elizabeth must pull herself together so she and her friends can make arrangements for Karen.
At this point in the book, Ms. Marshall takes the reader through the intricate and sometimes delicate relationships of each of the women. As they come together to mourn a dear loved one and reminisce about experiences that happened to them over the past several decades, there were times that I found myself in bust your gut, laugh out loud moments that were so well written and so unexpected I can't help but to suspect that some of them had to happen in real life. The skill that Ms. Marshall wrote the interactions between these characters made these women come alive for me.
While HUSBANDS MAY COME AND GO BUT FRIENDS ARE FOREVER by JUDITH MARSHALL had some extremely humorous moments, it also had some of the most heartfelt, tender, heartwarming moments that made it impossible to continue reading without a tissue box close by. In other words, I cried my eyes out.
This is a beautifully written book, an amazing account of friendship and loyalty between women. I highly recommend this book for any woman of any age.
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The story takes place in Northern California, in the spring of 2000, when the dot-com boom was at its peak. Elizabeth Reilly-Hayden is a successful executive in her late fifties and a divorced mother of two. Emotionally armored and living alone, she wants only to maintain the status quo: her long-term significant other, her job, and her trusted friends—five feisty women whose high school friendship has carried them through multiple marriages, dramatic divorces, and maddening menopause. Yet in a matter of days, the three anchors that have kept her moored are ripped away. The group of lifelong pals gathers at Lake Tahoe to attend to the funeral arrangements of their beloved friend and tries to unravel the mystery of her death. Through their shared tragedy, Elizabeth learns how disappointment and grief can bloom into healing and hope.
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