Never Change

This is a tender, compassionate account of a woman moving inexorably towards a lonely middle age who manages to seize a final chance for love. Myra Lipinsky has always been a loner, and happy to be so. At school she had few friends but plenty of people eager to seek her advice, and after leaving school she channels this empathy for other people into a fulfilling career as a visiting nurse, attending the sick and needy in their own homes. For years Myra is apparently content with her dinners for one, her dog, Frank, and her life lived vicariously through a brilliantly realized, bizarre collection of patients, including the perpetually panicking young mother, 16-year-old Grace, the drug-running De Witt and Fitz Walters, blind doyenne of local strip joints. But her apparently placid lifestyle is turned upside down when she is asked to take on a new patient, the terminally ill Chip Reardon. Chip is an old flame from high school, and not only is his condition terminal, but he is determined to refuse any sort of invasive treatment. Facing opposition from his parents and from Diann, an old girlfriend and object of Myra's envy many years ago, Chip turns to Myra for support. As his life ebbs away, Myra finds herself in the throes of an intensely loving relationship for the first time in her life. Happiness is within her grasp - but for how long? This is a gently humorous, deeply moving novel, which narrowly escapes falling into sentimentality by virtue of the author's dry wit. Occasionally Berg lapses into emotional laziness (the conscience-stricken mugger) and there are several irritating loose ends (what happened to Chip's apparently devoted parents all the time he was living with Myra?) but the reader is left with a profound sense of sadness, combined with a deep joy that two people are able to snatch a brief moment of pure happiness from a seemingly hopeless situation. (Kirkus UK)