One True Thing: Love What You Have
by Anna Quindlen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anna QuindlenEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1995-09-01
ISBN: 044022103X
Number of pages: 387
Publisher: Dell Publishing Company, Inc.
Product features:
- This is a story of personal transformation and the destruction of illusions within a family.
Book Reviews of One True Thing: Love What You Have
Book Review: One True Thing
Summary: 5 Stars
Many people read novels hoping to escape away into another "world" so to say, as they witness someone else's life through their readings. It is then, if the author writes a well literary piece, that the reader can transition themselves into the main character's life and really become engrossed in their readings. Anna Quindlen throws a very realistic situation at her readers in her novel, One True Thing. She makes her reader think what would I do if I found out my mother had cancer? In this novel, our main character Ellen, is faced with this exact difficult situation, and as the reader we go through an emotional rollercoaster with her as she deals with her mother's ups and downs of her sickness. But through it all the true meaning behind the story of friendship prevails, and it is then that the story becomes very meaningful and moving.
The novel is very realistic even down to its setting, it takes place in New York City where Ellen leads her "perfect life" or at least up until when she goes home to California to visit family, and is faced with the conflict of finding out her mother has cancer. It is then that her Father asks her to leave her so called "perfect life" that she has earned in New York to come home and take care of her mother. Ellen has to decide what is more important to her, and she chooses her Mother, even though she never really had a close relationship with Katherine (the mother). However, Ellen is a very responsible and determined character so her father knew he could count on her. As time goes on Ellen and her mother become very close. Her mom began to teach her how to cook and clean properly and she passed down those family traditions that even up until then Ellen did not know about. The two women began to realize how much they had in common with each other, and it was then that the reader not only sees a mother/daughter relationship, but also a friendship as close as being best friends between these two characters. But just as things seemed to be getting better, Ellen's emotional rollercoaster hits rock bottom as she finds out that the chemo just wasn't working anymore for her Mother. Her Father then hired a nurse, Teresa, because it was becoming very difficult for Ellen to take care of her mother by herself. Ellen did not like this at first she felt as though Teresa was coming in-between the bond that Ellen and Katherine had just built up. But as time goes on we see that Teresa becomes a very important person in Ellen's life as well, helping her through all those tough times and becoming like her "second mother." And once again we see Ellen build a very strong friendship with someone else in her life.
Although this novel may not resolve in one of those "happily ever after" endings, it gives the reader a realistic view on how tough life can be sometimes. It proves to us that we all need friends and those strong relationships to help us get through all the bumpy roads in our lives. One True Thing, is such a realistic book that anyone can relate to. If you have a strong relationship/friendship with anyone in your life then this book is worth while in reading. It shows us to never take advantage of any one person in our lives. That no matter where you go in life that you will always take a piece of everyone you have met with you.
Summary of One True Thing: Love What You Have
A mother. A daughter. A shattering choice.From Anna Quindlen, bestselling author of Black and Blue, comes a novel of life, love and everyday acts of mercy.
"A triumph."
--San Francisco Chronicle
One True Thing is a film starring Meryl Streep as the cancer-stricken homemaker mother, Renee Zellweger as the daughter who quits her top-dog job to care for her, and William Hurt as the chilly professor who lets the women in the family do the heavy emotional lifting dying requires. But the real star of the project remains former New York Times everyday-life columnist Anna Quindlen, who quit her top-dog job to write novels (and who took time off from college to nurse her own dying mother).
Quindlen hit a nerve with One True Thing, which captures an experience seldom dealt with in popular culture. (One exception: the sensitive 1996 film with Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio of the play Marvin's Room.) Though the heroine of One True Thing, Ellen Gulden, is a golden girl with two brothers who'll lose her career the instant she steps off the fast track, society concurs with her dad, who says, "It seems to me another woman is what's wanted here."
The book is a mother-daughter tale that should please fans of, say, The Joy Luck Club. It's not flashy, but it has a deep feel for the way children often discover, just before it's too late, who their parents really are. "Our parents are never people to us," Ellen writes, "they're always character traits.... There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat." The mercy-killing subplot isn't gripping, but the palpable sense of deepening family intimacy certainly is. --Tim Appelo
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