They May Not Mean To, But They Do: A Novel

"Cathleen Schine’s charming novel takes a wise, witty look at a potentially unfunny subject: the upset that occurs when the seesaw of care tilts from elderly parents to their grown offspring. Recently widowed 86-year-old Joy Bergman is exhausted, bereft and “hanging on by a bourgeois thread” after the grueling death of her husband from Alzheimer’s. Clinging to her independence, she strives to reassure her well-meaning children that she’s OK. The novel plays the situation – a fridge filled with what look like petri dishes; a suitor who alarms Joy’s family even more than the piles of unpaid bills — for a combination of mirth and pathos. But it’s Schine’s sensitivity to the losses and fears of both generations that really hits home."