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   Summary and Book Reviews

Never Change: Summary and book reviews of Never Change by Elizabeth Berg, plus links to an excerpt from Never Change and a biography of Elizabeth Berg.

Never Change

Never Change
by Elizabeth Berg
Hardcover: May 2001,
224 pages.
Paperback: Apr 2002,
224 pages.

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Reader Reviews

Author Biography
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Critics' Opinion:   good
Readers' Rating:  Five Stars
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BOOK SUMMARY



You know people like me. I'm the one who sat in a folding chair out in the hall selling tickets to the prom but never going, the one everybody liked but no one wanted to be with.

A self-anointed spinster at fifty-one, Myra Lipinsky has endured the isolation of her middle life by doting on her dog, Frank, and immersing herself in her career as a visiting nurse. Myra considers herself reasonably content, telling herself, It's enough, work and Frank. And it has been enough -- until Chip Reardon, the too-good-to-be-true golden boy she adored from afar, is assigned to be her new patient. Choosing to forgo invasive treatment for an incurable illness, Chip has returned from Manhattan to the New England home of his childhood to spend what time he has left. Now, Myra and Chip find themselves engaged in a poignant redefinition of roles, and a complicated dance of memory, ambivalence, and longing.

From the author whose work The New Yorker calls "strong" and "timeless" comes a wry and beautifully distilled portrait of one woman's resilience in the face of loneliness, and of a union that transcends life's most unexpected and challenging circumstances. With effortless warmth, and loving respect for characters that defies easy sentiment, Never Change melds the emotional depth and gentle intensity of poetry with the rich satisfactions of finely wrought fiction.

BOOK REVIEWS

Media Reviews

Average  Kirkus Reviews
Another bedside drama from prolific bestseller Berg ..... Berg wastes her considerable writing talent on a contrived, familiar story, and a likable but implausible protagonist. Still, who can argue with success?

Good  Library Journal
Berg seems to have bounced back. Her previous novel, Until the Real Thing Comes Along was a fun read, but there was no substance beneath the diversion. With Never Change, Berg gets closer to the power and depth of her early novel Talk Before Sleep.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by Lindaintexas
I have just finished "Never Change". I cannot remember a book that brought me to the deepest parts of the human experience as effectively as this one. Elizabeth Berg knows what the greater truths of life are. She walks in the path of...   Read More

Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by Alana Mcdonnas
i am still only in high school but the librarian in my school recommended this to me as she had already read it and enjoyed it. i found this book was funny in some parts but in other parts it had me in tears.

Myra - who is the main...   Read More

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