Review: The Last Time I Saw You (Elizabeth Berg)

Elizabeth Berg delivers yet again in this story about a group of people that go to their 40th--and last--high schools reunion. A little appropriate, as my ten-year reunion just took place. I didn't go. Indeed, I didn't even consider the possibility. As soon as I saw the tickets would be $50 each, I knew I wouldn't bother. Besides, who wants to go to Houston in July? And, to boot, I hated high school. I loved my friends, and it wasn't like people went out of their way to pick on me. Still, it's just not a time in my life that I remember with nostalgia.

This story made me stop to think about how, in fact, the world turns out to be a big high school and that it may not be as awful as expected. Now, it didn't make me regret skipping the reunion. Still, Elizabeth Berg manages to make even the most basic stories come alive. I love her work. This is the fourth book of hers that I have read and I look forward to picking up more.

So The Last Time I Saw You starts from Dorothy Shauman's perspective. Dorothy is a 58 year-old- woman, but Berg sets the tone for the story by showing that Dorothy hasn't really changed all that much since high school. Indeed, most of us tend to revert to old patterns under pressure. Dorothy exemplifies this. The reader also gets to know Candy Sullivan, the school beauty who hasn't had the charmed life everyone expected for her. Lester Hessenpfeffer, a nerd throughout high school, now a successful vet, finally starts to consider ending his self-imposed solitude. Pete Decker, the jock and prom king that finds out that trying charming your way through life doesn't always work--especially if you've hurt the people you love.

And then there is Mary Alice Mayhew. I loved Mary Alice from the beginning. She is a super sweet woman who has played the hand life gave her to the best of her ability. High school was particularly bad to her, but she never let it tear her up. You end up desprately hoping that she finds someone who really appreciates her. I wanted to give her a hug the entire time.

Berg, like always, creates a wonderful story out of simple things. She specializes in describing everyday sights and smells in a way that makes me stop to look around and acknowledge the wonders around me. Even if it is just inhaling the scent of laundry. And she creates a fantasy that seems quite attainable to the former high school nerds (now just nerds) like myself. All of her characters are painfully human and she makes them sympathetic even when they behave badly.

Next up: The Stormchasers, by Jenna Blum. I read her first book, Those Who Save Us. I really liked it, so I'm hoping this one meets expectations as well.