Rating: 
Summary: This book was very powerful.
Review: I don't think everyone would enjoy this book but I thought it was fantastic. Ellen is first seen as fairly cold-hearted and self-centered but most 24 year olds are. It is a great book for anyone who has had issues with her mother. It is sometimes easy to forget that your mother has a life of her own and had one long before you came along. I like Quindlan's style of writing and I enjoyed the outcome of the book.
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Summary: "One True Thing" is true to the heart
Review: Sometimes in the world of reading you just get lucky as I did when I found "One True Thing" sitting on my shelf. Don't really know how it got there actually. But I thank the "book-god" it did. Truly a book to take to heart, this is the story about an adult-age daughter who moves home to take care of her dying mother. Could I do the same? Leave my job? My friends? My lover? Ellen does just that and she learns about herself and her family. True to heart and heart-wrenching.
Rating:
Summary: A great read!! Have some kleenex handy!!
Review: This is a fabulous book! Ellen
returns home to take care of her mother, who is dying from cancer. While there, she
evaluates all of the relationships in her life.
Ellen learns much about her "June Cleaver" type mother, the father she has spent her life trying to please, the boyfriend she left behind, and most of all, herself, while spending her days and nights alone or with her dying mother.
When later in the story, she is on trial for her mother's murder, she makes a final realization and comes to terms with her family and herself.
This book is one of the best I've read in a long time. It made me cry and think about my own relationships, especially with my mother. It is definitely Quindlen's best!!
Rating:
Summary: A daughter's discovery
Review: In this "you won't be able to put it down" novel by author
Anna Quindlen, we listen to a daughter's story. As she returns to her parents' home to help care for her dying mother, Ellen begins a parallel voyage of discovery. A professional, working woman, Ellen had struggled
for years with her mother's perfectionist homemaking - inwardly mocking the elaborate decorating projects and
devotion to creating a beautiful home. Facing trial for her
mother's murder, Ellen uncovers many secrets. She begins to
know, as most readers can only hope to discover, the
deep strength behind her mother's affection.
Rating:
Summary: A great read!! Have some kleenex handy!!
Review: This is a fabulous book! Ellenreturns home to take care of her mother, who is dying from cancer. While there, she evaluates all of the relationships in her life. Ellen learns much about her "June Cleaver" type mother, the father she has spent her life trying to please, the boyfriend she left behind, and most of all, herself, while spending her days and nights alone or with her dying mother. When later in the story, she is on trial for her mother's murder, she makes a final realization and comes to terms with her family and herself. This book is one of the best I've read in a long time. It made me cry and think about my own relationships, especially with my mother. It is definitely Quindlen's best!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and thought-provoking
Review: "One True Thing" is one of the best books I've read in ages. The writing is beautifully done and the story itself is touching, heartbreaking, surprising, and thought-provoking. It isn't always an easy book to read -- I was worn-out by the time I finally reached the end, but it was worth the ride. The novel is told from the point-of-view of Ellen, an ambitious, successful, intelligent woman who quits her job and returns to her small college town to nurse her mother, who is dying of cancer. While Ellen's mother's cancer is an essential part of the story, "One True Thing" is most effective in its focus on family relationships, how we view and remember those relationships, and the mistakes we make in how we view relationships and each other. One part of the story I especially enjoyed was a conversation between Ellen and her mother, Kate. They were reading "Pride and Prejudice" and Kate, a warm and nurturing housewife, has a rather interesting opinion. "I remember admiring it but being a little put off by it, too, because it does that cheap thing that people do, it makes the sister who is sweet and domestic and good a second fiddle to the one who is smart and outspoken...It didn't seem fair to me, that Jane was so good and yet Elizabeth is the one who is admired...Jane Austen should have known better than to make women into that kind of either-or thing...Women writers of all people should know better than to pigeonhole women, put them in little groups, the smart one, the sweet one..." This conversation between Ellen and Kate is in many ways the backbone of the story. Also, I was very surprised by the revelation made at the end of the book. Isn't it great when an author can fool you about something? I must admit that I never saw that coming, and up until that moment, the book had not made me cry. It did then.
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Summary: A touching story that makes you want to call your mother!
Review: A reader from Langhorne (just a coincidence)< PA, January 9, 1999. Anna Quindlen has always captivated me, be it in writing or the spoken word. I really was touched by this book because my mother-in-law died a excruciatingly painful death at home from cancer. I felt like Gen for I was the outsider, she did not know how to ask me for help and I did not know how to offer it. My husband and his brothers made their peace while caring for her and you can tell the writer must have experienced something so similar. While reading "Living Out Loud" I learned that her mother did die from cancer and left behind some very young children. I want to commend Ms. Quindlen for a job well done in describing the process we go through when dying and also in coming to terms with our parents dying. I do not cry easily because something really has to touch my inner being and this book did. I totally disagree with a reader from Chicago who only gave this superb novel one star and lambasted the characters as being one-dimensiona. This misinformed reader must not know much about the author and I suggest reading all of her worthwhile books. I have read three but own all of them so I can read them at my leisure; I also have friends waiting for me to pass on the books when I am finished. Kudos to the author for portraying how many families relate and maybe we can achieve that "one true thing" before it is too late.
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Summary: One Truly Great Book!
Review: "One True Thing" is a well-written tearjerker which is very hard to put down. The story is heart wrenching, captivating, and I was sorry to see it end. Ellen Guilden, is eager to return to her job as a journalist in New York City, when she learns that her mother has cancer. Ellen's father forces her to stay and take care of her mother, by laying a guilt trip on her and telling her that she has no heart. Kate, who was the classic "Donna Reed" type housewife and mother, never really had a close relationship with her daughter. During their time together the two bond and their relationship grows. Ellen discovers what a remarkable person her mother was, and Ellen herself is tranforms into a completely different person. Anna Quindlen, is truly gifted with her ability to tell stories so poignant that they stay with you long after you finish reading the last page. I highly recommend reading this book and "Black and Blue" also.
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Summary: Death to typecasting!
Review: I have read two books by Anna Quindlen back to back, which is something i never do. I like to mix it up, but in this case i enjoyed Black and Blue so much i decided to continue with her. This novel did not disappoint me at all. It was beautifully written, and at the core was a subject that i have rolled around my head time and time again. No, it is not euthanasia. It is the tendency we have to categorize people based on surface characteristics. Ellen, the narrator, is a victim of it. Kate, her mother, is another victim. Ellen realizes too late the dear price you have to pay for typecasting people into roles and personalities which were simply mere facets of an otherwise complex character.
I was slightly disappointed with Ellen becoming a doctor. I thought the story would have been more rounded if she had turned into another Teresa Guerrero. By the way, it would be wonderful if Anna Q spun another novel with Teresa as the main role.
The family dynamics were portrayed to perfection. The humorous moments between the siblings, for example, were quite dull, yet they found them hilarious. That is a sign of the awkward dynamics that existed within the family. Those private jokes were so silly that only the dysfunctional children of a remote scholar and Eleanor Roosevelt undercover as Martha Stewart could produce.
Still, a wonderful book. I enjoyed it so much that i will never see the movie adaptation. I have a really hard time picturing Renee Zellweger as Ellen. Ouch!
Rating:
Summary: One True Thing
Review: 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.
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