Hello Goodbye

Starred review from March 9, 2009
A family copes with a mother's terminal cancer in Chenoweth's moving and assured debut. The Hansens—Elliot, Helen and college-age daughter Abby—spend a week at a swanky New Hampshire hotel shortly after Helen's oncologist gives her nine months to live. Old family friends come out for the decadent soiree, and as the parents reminisce with friends, Abby wanders the woodsy grounds in a self-absorbed funk, hiding from the humiliation brought about by her mother's diminished capacity. Then one of the hotel's waiters, Alex, begins courting her with poetry and secret notes, and Abby is both attracted and repelled by Alex and the gang of summer employees, who have a predilection for skinny dipping and pot brownies. As Abby slides bumpily from shrugging off reality to facing her mother's fate, the assembled friends and family prepare for a round of wrenching farewells. Chenoweth's smart, unsentimental and poignant takes on living and dying ring true, and her exploration of coming-of-age and coming to terms with mortality is divine.

April 15, 2009
An understated debut novel of great beauty and power about a vibrant woman who contracts terminal brain cancer.

It begins with a typical day in the life of Helen: She comes in from her morning run, makes coffee, works on her grocery list—and then experiences an exploding light and"a great wonder of anguish." From this moment, her life changes irrevocably. After a grueling course of chemotherapy and radiation, her husband Elliott, headmaster at a school in New Hampshire, arranges a visit to a resort hotel where they will celebrate their 20th anniversary with old friends. Also on this retreat—one can scarcely call it a vacation—is Abby, the couple's 18-year-old daughter, who hasn't been told that her mother's illness is terminal. Chenoweth adopts an interesting narrative technique. While Helen is always the central figure, we spend much time away from her and in the consciousness of her family and friends. We meet Dom, still in love with Helen after 15 or more years of friendship, and Neil, whose"new" wife Sylvie is too bohemian to fit in with this staid older crowd. We see Elliott's anguish and his attenuated ability to comfort his wife and Abby's tentativeness as she emerges from the shelter provided by her parents and partially glimpses the seriousness of her mother's condition—all while we witness Helen's dignity in the face of debilitation, her efforts to remain cheerful both for her sake and for her family and friends. The novel ends with Helen's moving epiphany:"The world is beautiful, and she is so glad she has seen it."

Heartbreaking yet unsentimental.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 1, 2009
Elliott Hansen and his wife, Helen, are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary with a party at a luxury hotel in New Hampshire, where they lived ten years earlier before moving to Ohio. Elliott has planned well, inviting their New England friends and neighbors and keeping the truth from Helen that her inoperable brain cancer is fatal. Their 18-year-old daughter, Abby, is also in the dark, which is why she is feeling resentful and solitary among these old friends and anxious to discover her worth, even if it's with a preppie hotel waiter. The guests dance around the inevitable, perhaps because facing reality has been something they have avoided for as long as they have known one another. This richly textured, multilayered treatise on learning to give up hope while still grasping at straws is searing in its approach to losing those we hold dear. First novelist Chenoweth, a former editor at "Publishers Weekly", writes gracefully and eloquently of loss and love, portraying both generations at their most self-absorbed and most vulnerable. Highly recommended. [Online discussion guide; library marketing.]Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal

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