Never Change

When 51-year-old Myra Lipinski discovers that her high school dream, Chip Reardon, has come back to town with an incurable form of brain cancer, her staid life as a private duty nurse changes dramatically. Placed under her care, Chip moves back into her world and her life, but does she have the courage to admit this terminally ill former idol into her heart? Suzanne Toren slips easily through the tonal changes from character to character. She is at once the tentative narrator, Myra; the assertive Chip; the angry Mrs. Reardon; the husky drug-dealing Dewitt; and myriad others in Myra's world. Berg tells a moving story of courage and compassion that in other hands might teeter on the maudlin. Her characters and her narrative, however, coupled with the sheer force and energy of Toren's reading, prevent this. P.E.F. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

May 14, 2001
Oprah author Berg (her Open House
was a 2000 Book Club selection) turns in another sweet, unprepossessing and reassuringly predictable novel whose characters experience loneliness, loss and healing. "Odd-shaped," and with an "unfortunate" face, Myra Lipinski has been lonely all her life; she trained as a nurse "because I knew it would be a way for people to love me." Now 51, she lives alone with her dog and works as a visiting nurse in Boston, caring for an array of eccentrics that includes the feuding Schwartz couple, the feisty DeWitt Washington and the anxious teenage mother Grace. Resigned to spinsterhood, Myra is secretly thrilled when her agency assigns her to care for a former crush, Chip Reardon, who has returned to his parents' home with end-stage brain cancer. In high school, Chip was a golden boy, athletic and clever, out of ugly duckling Myra's league. Now, though, he and Myra strike up a friendship based on their mutual loneliness and on Chip's resistance to his parents, who want him to pursue aggressive treatment for his cancer. Chip prefers to die peacefully, a decision that only Myra seems to understand. Chip and Myra become inseparable: he tags along on her patient visits and eventually moves into her house, where their budding friendship takes a romantic turn. On the brink of death, Chip helps Myra to realize that her isolation is as much self-induced as fated; throughout their lives, both he and Myra have shied away from human closeness. In an inspiring, well-deserved denouement, Chip's inevitable death forces Myra to embrace the world in all its bittersweet complexity. Berg's fans will be grateful for the same gift: a novel that serves as a gentle, if unambitious, reminder to "only connect." 10-city author tour.