The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D

May 21, 2012
When Elizabeth dies in a plane crash a month before 9/11, her will designates her friend Kate as the recipient of her lifelong journals, in this tepid debut. Kate spends her family vacation during the summer of 2002 reading through Elizabeth's journals, discovering the truth about the woman she thought she had known. Elizabeth's history is full of secrets: a childhood accident, a decision to abandon her artistic studies to care for her mother, her relationship with her husband, and most curiously, the reason she was on that ill-fated August 2001 flight. Other than her time-appropriate anxieties about terrorism and loss, Kate is a pedestrian character, with quiet conflicts about her workaday marriage and thoughts of exchanging motherhood for a return to her career as a pastry chef. As a character, Elizabeth has more potential, but Kate's recaps of important events in Elizabeth's life, interspersed with brief passages from the diaries, feel journalistic and unfinished, like notes from a character study. Moments of beauty and depth of spirit will appeal to readers interested in secrets revealed, but the novel is slow and relies too heavily on introspection. Agent: Julie Barer.

January 1, 2013

In this compelling debut novel set in New York just after 9/11, Kate, an accomplished pastry chef and mother of two, inherits a trunk of journals belonging to her late friend Elizabeth. Kate spends the summer reading the journals and is shocked by all that Elizabeth managed to hide from her friends and family. Though she's already unsettled by the terror attacks, reading Elizabeth's shattering secrets causes Kate to reflect as well on her own identity and to question her career, marriage, and parenting choices. Angela Brazil's pleasant voice and measured delivery add much to this nuanced novel. VERDICT Recommend to fans of Elizabeth Berg, Anne Tyler, or Jodi Picoult. ["A literary women's novel that should be a favorite of book groups and have broad appeal beyond," read the review of the Crown hc, LJ 6/1/12.--Ed.]--Beth Farrell, Cleveland State Univ. Law Lib.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.