Mr. Right vs. Mr. Right Now: A Tale as Bold as Time

After a hiatus, the book club is back!  So it's time to review my most recent pick, namely Rebecca Serle's Expiration Dates.

Daphne Bell has been given a gift -- or a curse, depending how you look at it.  The universe sends her pieces of paper saying the amount of time she'll spend with each man she dates.  Daphne doesn't know how or why these relationships end, only that they will.

But Daphne isn't just a thirtysomething looking for love.  Because this is Serle, who delivered a doozy of a gotcha in One Italian Summer.  In Expiration Dates, she does it again, and I didn't even see it coming.  But once I processed the say what? of it all, I appreciated how it deepened the story.

I don't think I can say more without being a spoiler.  I will say that Serle's writing is beautiful, lending magic to an already enchanted premise. 

Expiration Dates reminds us that time is as infinite as it is finite -- but ultimately what we make of it.

Rebecca Serle's Mother of Pearl Pearls of Wisdom

I picked up Rebecca Serle's One Italian Summer during a Target run last September, but it remained on my bookshelf for months.  Although it was much-buzzed-about, I just wasn't ready for a mother-daughter tearjerker.  But after I read Lee Hollis's (highly entertaining and enjoyable) Death of a Lobster Lover, I was ripe for something serious.

And losing your mother is as serious as it gets.

That's what happens to thirty-year-old Katy Silver in this novel.  Her mother was her best friend, so when she dies, Katy's world crashes.  Now she's questioning everything, including her marriage.  Heartbroken and lost, she embarks on the Italian vacation that she and her mother planned to take together.  Positano turns out to be postcard-perfect.  Katy is spellbound, getting to know her mother in a new way by exploring the city she loved.  Then the unthinkable happens when Katy sees her mother at her hotel, in the flesh and thirty years younger.  What follows is an unorthodox and haunting jaunt down memory lane.  I didn't love or even agree with all of it.  Yet although some parts were problematic, what I initially thought of as a clumsy conceit ultimately gave me chills.  

Thought-provoking and moving, One Italian Summer was sometimes difficult for this daughter and, now mother, to read.  

Still, it was well worth the detour.