Trip was to Desolation Wilderness. Here are a couple of photos that have nothing whatsoever to do with the book! But so beautiful! Look past them for the review of Elizabeth Berg’s The Confession Club…
The Confession Club by Elizabeth Berg
Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on November 19th, 2019.
The Confession Club is the third book in the continuing chronicles of Mason, Missouri (aka the Arthur Truluv sequels). Iris Winters — almost 50, renting the house where Arthur Truluv once lived, and continuing Lucille Howard’s baking classes — falls slowly and gently in love. The target of her affections is a man most would consider inappropriate — a homeless man who has taken up residence in a nearby abandoned farm. As a kind of Greek chorus, we also meet a group of women who belong to the Confession Club, where each meeting focuses discussion on one woman’s confession of perceived misdeed or general shame. This opens the story up to interesting exchanges about morals, guilt, and general life expectations.
Berg writes comforting books — books where happy endings exist and joy can be found even by those who least expect it as a possibility. Her characters are not young, hunky, and confused — instead they are older, experienced, and possess beautiful souls rather than bodies. The characters are well developed and endowed with a wide range of personalities — I found it interesting to see which characters I was drawn to, which irritated me, which I found prissy, funny, warm, or refreshingly direct. I’m sure each reader will have his/her own personal reactions to these realistic individuals — they serve as a kind of Rorschach test for understanding ourselves.
I did enjoy this book, but it didn’t bowl me over as did The Story of Arthur Truluv. Whereas I found Arthur to be a believable (and very lovable) character, I had a little more trouble with John Loney, the homeless veteran. He didn’t feel quite as fleshed out or believable (to me) and definitely not a representative sample of the homeless people I encounter regularly in San Francisco.
Books to look forward to ... 