"Very Moving and Powerful - Beautifully Written"

Myra Lipinski is 51 years-old and life is pretty much passing her by or she views it as if it is. Never married, she has left her job as an ICU nurse to become a visiting nurse, something she finds pretty rewarding even though she does get a little annoyed with some of her patients. We all knew someone like Myra in school. The girl who, instead of going to the prom, took tickets at the door. The girl who while she never had many dates, was the one who a lot of the girls came to for advice. She even had one guy come for her advise -- Chip Reardon, the school jock, the golden boy. Myra is stunned when she gets a referral to care for a man who has an incurable brain tumor and has returned to his hometown and the home of his parents to die -- the referral is for Chip Reardon, the golden boy. The boy she always saw in her dreams.

Chip, who has also never married, is very glad to see Myra and though he has had surgery, he has decided against chemotherapy or radiation, and just wishes to die with dignity. He is doing pretty well when they first meet, but it isn't too long before little things happen -- a shuffled gait, tiring easily, word finding problems, that tells Myra he doesn't have much time left. Chip and Myra become very good friends but soon a woman from his past (the girl he had gone steady with in high school - the beauty queen - now a successful attorney)soon arrives, rocking Myra's world or the world she had dreamed of with Chip.

The book is liberally seasoned with many wonderful secondary characters - patients of Myra's who eventually show Myra how much she is loved - with some help from Chip. Berg is a true artist with her words and the emotions she's able to evoke from the reader. I felt it was nothing short of brilliant.

I'd been burned by Berg's last two, one because I thought the heroine was TSTL (too stupid to live -- UNTIL THE REAL THING COMES ALONG), and the next because it was written in present tense - something I've never been able to read. I had read some wonderful reviews of NEVER CHANGE but since I'd had some bad experiences with her (after loving TALK BEFORE SLEEP and RANGE OF MOTION) I decided that I'd wait for the paperback (it was $24 for a 214 page book!) - well, then Pocket sent me an ARC. I started reading it and Berg just completely sucked me into the story and then I find most of it's in present tense! But you know, after awhile I didn't even notice!

This isn't an easy book to read. Myra and Chip become so real that you feel deeply for both of them. The reader even grows to like Diann, the woman from Chip's past (as does Myra much to her chagrin). This story is very moving, but not for the faint of heart, as readers will need many tissues to get through it. Those who stick with it, will be richly rewarded as, in a way, there is a happy ending for both Myra and Chip not that there are any miracles here. Or, perhaps, in a way, there are.

Buy this one in hardback -- you'll be glad you did.

Reviewed by Maudeen Wachsmith
Posted June 29, 2001