BOOK REVIEW: Never Change

Once in awhile a book comes along that turns out to be very personal. A book that makes you want to sit down with a good friend and a good glass of Pinot Grigio to talk about the book and life in general. NEVER CHANGE by Elizabeth Berg was one of those books for me.

Fifty-one years old Myra has never married. She explains herself as the girl in high school who sat on the folding chair selling tickets to the prom, but never having a chance to attend it. Her only relationship seems to be with her dog Frank.

Myra works as a home nurse, visiting patients who need help with changing dressings, giving insulin shots, and similar medical situations. Her new assignment is a former classmate who has been her secret love since their high school days. Chip was the perfect young man, handsome, popular with the girls as well as the boys, a star athlete; the boy who would do well all of his life.

Chip has been diagnosed with brain cancer and has come home to die. Myra and Chip are now in a situation where their roles have done a reversal.Now they share old memories and new discoveries, sometimes from very different points of view.

Elizabeth Berg takes what could have been a very trite plot and weaves a beautiful story. The book's strength is mainly in her cast of characters. Myra should be a pathetic, lonely, middle-aged woman. Instead she shows that she is a hero, a quiet hero full of warmth, wisdom and capabilities. Her attitude keeps us from seeing her as a pitiful creature, instead, we find ourselves admiring her.

We also see the depth of the golden boy Chip. Their memories of high school remind us how we neglect to look beyond the surfaces of our classmates.The perfect person in our English class may have things going on that would surprise us.

I loved how well Berg created Myra's patients. There was a feeling of honesty in their depiction. We met Grace, a fourteen-year-old new mother, DeWitt, a bitter, middle-aged black man who does some dealing in drugs, Rose, a victim of dementia who lives in poverty, blind Fitz who likes to go to the strip clubs. Each of Myra's patients become very real to the reader and as important to us as they are to Myra.There is a mini story in each person.

Author Elizabeth Berg has taken a simple story and fleshed it out with a sharply drawn wry observant eye. Her use of language, her pull on the readers' emotions, her character sketches are all done beautifully without  being over sentimental. NEVER CHANGE is a book that you will want to share.