A Good Distance

by Sarah Willis

Book Overview

Sarah Willis is one of today's most gifted novelists. Now the award-winning author delivers a heartrending story about mothers and daughters doing their best to negotiate the distance between freedom and love. Jennifer's mother, Rose, belongs in a home. At least that's what everyone else thinks. But Jennifer has walked away from her mother too many times already, and this is one duty she intends to fulfill herself. So she takes a leave of absence...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425200361
• ISBN13: 9780425200360
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

A Hauntingly Poignant Tale of Love, Forgiveness, and Redemption

For Jennifer, a woman with a husband and teenaged daughter of her own, having her elderly mother move into her home is both a blessing and a curse. Jen, who once ran away from home--and stayed away for ten years--is determined to gain her mother's forgiveness for their estrangement. She wants more than anything to apologize to her mother for the child that she was, and wants nothing more than for her mother to apologize for the alcoholic mother that Rose turned into after her husband's death. In fact, however, forgiviness may not be forthcoming on her mother's part, due to the fact that Rose is suffering from Alzheimer's. At times wonderfully lucid but more often than not living in the past, Rose wanders through a world where her husband is still alive, where her daughter Jennifer is still an angry, rebellious teen, where her son Peter still strives for achievement, and her youngest daughter, Betsy, sits quietly in the background. Rose wanders the corridors of her life as if it was a play, like one of the ones that her husband, Michael, once directed. She doesn't know who this woman is that keeps talking to her, asking her questions. She doesn't recognize Todd, Jennifer's husband, and often thinks her granddaughter, Jazz, is alternately her wayward daughter or her in-home nurse. A GOOD DISTANCE is a poignant story of love and forgiveness, of family, and of learning to forgive yourself. Dealing with Rose's Alzheimer's takes its toll on everyone involved, and yet her moments of lucidity almost make the pain worse for her daughter. For Jennifer, this time together before she can allow herself to put her mother in a nursing home is a second chance at a mother-daughter relationship. For Rose, it's a time of anger and embarrassment, mixed in with love and disgust for those around her. Sarah Willis has penned another wonderfully complicated, rich family drama, with heartfelt emotions and dialogue. A true winner.

I loved this book!!

I was hooked from page one. This book was so moving and true to life. Seeing the world through an Alzheimer patient's viewpoint was intriguing. Don't know how Miss Willis was able to make it seem so realistic. A daughter's attempt at redemption for a lost relationship w/her mother was also nicely done without a sappy tie it up in a bow ending. i highly recommend this book.

A touching, moving and beautifully written story

I finished this book last night and got to work this morning telling anyone who'd listen how wonderful it is. I enjoy books written from different perspectives. The reader sees how memories can be molded to fit the needs of the person doing the remembering. When Alzheimer's plays a role in those memories, there is added even another layer. Jennifer's mother, Rose, comes to live with Jennifer, her daughter and Jennifer's husband of 3 years. Jennifer has been a disappointment to Rose and wants to make amends, seek and give forgiveness. The toll it takes on her marriage and the impact Rose's presence has on her own daughter, and how Jennifer views her responsibility as a mother is another interesting part of the story. The book is told from first person, when Jennifer is narrating, and third person when told from Rose's perspective. We also get a piece of Rose's childhood and learn she faced similar problems as Jennifer when she was young and we know Rose when she was newly married, having babies and, later, widowed young with three young children and starting to date again. The author brilliantly works memories into Rose's Alzheimer's-suffering mind that the reader soons learns will be addressed in later chapters. I can't speak highly enough of this book.

very moving

I found this book gripping, always both believable and surprising. Sarah Willis probes the way relationships can fracture and seem to crumble-- then come together again through some magical combination of time and will. I highly recommend A Good Distance for anyone interested in fine writing AND in the ways that families make their way through the most difficult of times.

A Good Distance

Ms. Willis has further proven her talent as a first-rate wordsmith with her third novel, "A Good Distance." Anyone who has read her first two novels, "Some Things That Stay" and "The Rehearsal," will be pleased to find this entry equally engaging. Those who have not will be compelled to read everything Ms. Willis has written. Sarah Willis writes for her generation as predecessors Virginia Woolf and Dawn Powell did for theirs.