Saturday, December 19, 2015

There Was an Old Woman by Hallie Ephron

There Was An Old Woman by Hallie Ephron


When her alcoholic mother is rushed to the hospital, the neighbor, Mina Yetner, makes the call to let Evie Ferrante and her sister, Ginger, know what's happened.  Evie is a busy historical museum curator with no desire to bail out her mother yet again.  But Ginger insists it's Evie's turn to pitch in this time.  Evie goes back to the home she grew up in, only to find it a disaster.  Among the rotting food, roaches and new big screen television,  she also finds suspicious envelopes of cash and uncashed checks.  These discoveries start Evie on a journey she never imagined when she befriends the aging Mina.

I met Hallie Ephron once at the Willamette Writers Conference in Portland, Oregon.  She is interesting, dynamic and there is no question that she can write.  The characters are brilliantly created and the settings are expertly set.  When Evie is walking through mounds of trash and stink in her childhood home, the reader feels the skin crawling disgust just as Evie does. But this novel is billed as a suspense thriller.  Hardly.  I figured out what was going on less that half way through.

That being said, There Was An Old Woman is an interesting read.  It has a little bit of history, a touch of environmentalism and more about how gracefully or not, we face getting old. The subject matter knows how to play into that little voice of doubt in our heads, that grows louder as we age.  Beware.

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