Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: Family Secrets inYou Are The Love Of My Life

Lucy, children's book illustrator and single mother leaves New York and the married father of her children to live in the Washington house where she grew up and where she discovered her father’s suicide. With the back drop of Watergate, Lucy's life is full of secrets: her children know nothing of her father’s death or the identity of their own father. As new neighbors enter their lives, her family’s safety and stability become threatened. Susan Shreve's You Are The Love Of My Life is a gothic story of complicated family secrets and how those secrets can stand in the way of human connections.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Genre: Adult Non-Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5

"Being Mortal is about the limitations of what modern medicine can provide for people as their lives draw to a close. Gawande argues that the objective of medicine should not merely be treatment and survival; medical care should also ensure dignity in death and having control over one's final moments. He argues that instead of aggressively fighting the inescapable realities of aging, we should ask the hard questions of ourselves and our loved ones -- What makes life worth living? When should we try to extend our lives, and when should we choose a better quality of our remaining days over extending their quantity?

This book is difficult to read. Not because of the way Gawande writes -- his style is highly engaging, and he never lapses into excessively scientific jargon or overly simplistic explanations -- but because of the tough subject matter. Gawande draws on his own experiences as a doctor and peppers his book with honest and humane stories of his patients, friends, and family; the stories he tells make the book more accessible, and also more heartbreaking. (And that's not a bad thing.)

No one likes to think about their loved ones', or their own, impending mortality. But it's important to have these hard conversations, because as Gawande says, "endings matter." - Amanda

Family Secrets inYou Are The Love Of My Life

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