Between Us: Women Sharing Moments from Lives

by Marian Coe

Between Us is a gift package of shared experience from women's lives -- candid, honest and personal -- on a cornucopia of subjects, from shopping confessions to dealing with change, both personal and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932158316
• ISBN13: 9781932158311
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: High Country Publishers
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

Warm and honest

I bought this book to give as a gift on the advice of a woman friend who loves Coe's work. This was for someone going through a rough time and I didnt want something overly sentimental or banal. I read it to make sure it was okay and found it full of commentaries with intelligence and hopefulness--even some humor. That is a hard combination to find. Even as a man I think I can see that this small book can mean a great deal to many women. Too bad most men do not seem to communicate to each other in the same ways.

Tiny Volume; Great Gift

Marian Coe brings a lifetime of wisdom won by a woman who suffered, stumbled, triumphed, worked, rejoiced, and wept, to this marvelous collection in a deceptively small package. Coe's idiosyncratic style evokes Emily Dickinson, without imitating anyone. The eclectic patchwork of thoughts and memories, earned over a lifetime of hard work, strong opinions, laughter, joy, sorrow, and hard-won lessons, brings the weight of experience to each idea, each trenchant observation. Beginning with "You asked ..." a question whose essence is: "How Am I Doing?" the speaker assures us: "Talking to women, you'll get answers." But if questions bring answers, the answers only bring more questions. Coe's prose reads like poetry; her poetry reads with the easy rhythms of prose; but the ideas are rarely easy, Coe brings insights, not necessarily answers, on every page. "In a Crowded Mall Today," the poet, resting in the mall, spots another woman "claiming the opposite bench." Wondering why the two must remain strangers, the poet carries on an imaginary conversation with the woman "easing the toes from her crazy heels ..." Question follows question: "...you are not thinking of shoes./ ... Do you grieve at the bizarre willingness of the young to die,/ While others ... /hold on to life as a gift?" And, at the end, "I wish we might have talked." Coe pulls no punches: on smoking, she cites her own experience with its results: "Don't you see ... oxygen tanks hung on walker or wheel chair ...?" In "Waiting for Relief" Coe lays out grief like a stone in the chest. In the end, she provides two blank pages for readers' own thoughts. Judith Foster Geary's enchanting text design frames this collection of transcendent grief, laughter, and wisdom with a wisdom of its own. Every page is a present within itself. This is the kind of book you want to give away, and you want to keep on your nightstand. It's a tiny volume ... and an enormous gift.