This is my first Elizabeth Berg novel. I was excited to read it because of all the great reviews. I was very disappointed, even to the point of being uninterested in ever reading her again. I did feel that Ms. Berg must have done alot of reasearch on the effects of widowhood. Not having gone through it myself, I felt that her character was displaying the grief, the irrational thinking, the terrors and the lonliness that new widows must go through. But only new widows from a unrealistic perfect marriage. I grew very tired of the descriptions of the perfect John. I was also exasperated at a woman my age who had not developed a seperate identity from her husband. I thought that went out with my mother's generation. Other characters and situations also rang untrue. For a better read on widowhood, try Lolly Winston's "Good Grief."