My aunt is a renowned doctor living in Memphis. She was one of the first women breast surgeons and her and her husband founded the Mroz-Baier clinic for breast cancer in Memphis. They are innovators and have made great strides towards the cure of breast cancer. I have a box full of newspaper clippings and pictures of them with prominent people like President Clinton and Barbara Bush. My Aunt is someone who I look up to and admire greatly. So when she sent this book to me, and told me she had read it several times and it was one of her favorites, I had to give it a try. Labeled Chick Lit(I hate that name, it makes it sound sappy), my stack of Elizabeth Berg books was ever growing, but still unread. I knew she had to have some merit, no one writes that many books and doesn't have some sort of impact, but again, they looked like typical woman's literature, and I hesitated. So my Aunt sending me one, finally made me pick one up. Now my Aunt belongs to my Dad's family, the side that grew up on my Grandfather's farm. Stoic, hardworking, and not very open about their thoughts or feelings, sometimes it's hard to get a read on them. This book opened up a whole new world of wonder about my Aunt, and as I sat underlining or highlighting every other word, I hoped that someday my thoughts written in this dusty little paperwork, would open up a whole new world of insight to my children who might read it. I had a boss once who was talking about why he chose a particular book as his favorite. He said it wasn't the deepest book out there, but it spoke to him, and described very well the thoughts he sometimes had. That's how I feel about Pull of the Moon. Berg has a simple way to describe what this woman, Nan, is feeling as she takes off from her everyday life, for a road trip and to "find" herself. A monotonous marriage and the fear of getting older is what drives her, but she learns so much more about herself than she knew. From meeting new people, and attempting new experiences, to trying to get over her fear of the dark by sleeping in the forest alone at night, she pushes the boundaries of the rules she's lived the last 50 years by. About her marriage... "...you'll see the small lines starting in each other's faces, and though your hands may be in your laps they will also be reaching out to touch those lines with a tenderness you weren't sure was in you. You'll think, Oh well, all right. You'll have come to a certain kind of appreciation that moves beyond all the definitions of love you've ever had." And in writing a letter to her husband... "I try to cast my thoughts out, meaning to share all of them with you, Martin, and then slowly pull the line back in, your not having seen much at all. You stop listening so I seize up, or I seize up so you stop listening, I'm not sure..." Before I got married, we were required to go to a sort of marriage counseling with the pastor who would be doing our ceremony. I remember him and his wife sitting there, talking to us and saying, as he smiled gently at his wife, "I kind of see marriage as two rocks with a lot of rough edges. You bang against each other over and over and eventually the edges are smoothed out." I think the above two passages of Berg's describes this perfectly. I feel like I'm fluctuating between the "Why won't you listen to me more?" and the "Oh well, all right." Berg also touches upon the sweet bitterness of getting older, the body that doesn't seem her own anymore, and the woman who doesn't care so much anymore what people think so she can get away with more. On life's regrets she writes... "I am so often struck by what we do not do..." And when talking about her feelings and running away from them... "Today I woke up and felt the old pull of sadness back. It's like a robe that is too heavy, weighing down my shoulders, dragging up dirt as it follows along behind me. This was disappointing. I thought I'd escaped something." Berg creates a feeling and atmosphere in her book that is both concise and general at the same time. The epistolary format was a brilliant move, because it makes us feel like Nan is our friend, just another woman trying to understand her life. There is something in this book for all women. I can't imagine there's a woman out there that can't relate to at least a little of what Nan is experiencing. I loved this book. Perhaps it's because I'm coming up on 40 and am starting to feel it or maybe it's because this September I celebrate my ten year anniversary with my husband, I'm not sure. But this book really touched me and for now, it's become one of my favorites. Not a classic by any means, but an enjoyable read, especially for a women who feels alone, to know there are many other women out there that have the same thoughts. ClassicsDefined.com
RATING UPDATE: When I gave five stars to THE PULL OF THE MOON, I was thinking only about my enjoyment of this book. Then today, while I was thinking about several other five-star books, I decided that this Berg novel doesn't belong in the group that I call tier-one books. Preface: My review of THE PULL OF THE MOON would have been posted Thursday night, but lightning attacked the computer's modem as I was proofreading the review for the fifth time. (Note to self -- never proofread your work more than four times during a major storm.) Now that I have Internet access again, I'm composing a review to replace the one that Mother Nature wiped out. Arghhhh, mothers!Although I don't play music while I'm reading, certain books make me hear it. The latest example: THE PULL OF THE MOON -- it kept depositing invisible quarters in the jukebox in my head and pressing the button for Stephen Sondheim's "Who's That Woman?" So I couldn't read Elizabeth Berg's words without hearing, "Who's that woman? I know I know that woman. . . . Each day I see her pass/In my looking-glass -- /Lord, Lord, Lord, that woman is me!"(FOLLIES). Nan, Berg's protagonist who explores and exposes herself through the alternating letters and journal entries that make up the novel -- yeah, I know that woman. I don't, of course, see her in my mirror; but I know what she sees in her mirror because I know what I see in mine. There is much in our lives, especially our husbands (at opposite ends of an arc), that could prompt me to say, "Nan and I have little in common." But what we have in common compels me to say, "I REALLY do know that woman."We are the same age. Well, not strictly speaking. She's eight years younger than I am, but "menopausally speaking" (Sarah P., you can add that expression to your lexicon), I can claim to be her age. It is an age at which many a woman says a tearful goodbye to womanhood because her ovaries are now wearing matching Rest-In-Peace rings. It is an age at which she REALLY, REALLY can't stand her body and -- in Nan's case --her life as well. Her life no longer includes dreams if you don't count the frightening type. At the beginning of seventh grade, Nan imagined Nan the writer, Nan the scientist, Nan the archeologist, Nan the "favorite teacher" -- everyone's (118). Exciting possibilities were there for her. Although at fifty she refers to her age as "the age of losses" (142), her journal entries indicate that, like many women, the onset of menstruation is the real "age of losses." "By the middle of the year [seventh grade:]," she tells us, "the phone replaced Hitchcock and my sure dreams of being everything"(119). Hiding under the beauty of the arrival of womanhood is the death of dreams. As a young woman, Nan married Martin. And Nan and Martin had a child. And Nan had married a man who could be counted on. And she had married a man who could be counted on to dismiss each of her occasional proposals to take a risk -- to put her creative urges into something besides meeting her husband's and child's needs. According to Martin, "life is by and large meaningless and dull"(123). And he does his part to validate that belief. Nan the fifty-year-old woman -- not a writer, not an archeologist, not a biologist -- realizes that she "meant to come back" after she went "underground for twenty-five years"(124). Once her daughter is on her own, though, she can see that "the bread crumbs got blown away"(124). Readers familiar with "To Room Nineteen" might notice the similarity between what Berg's protagonist reveals about herself and what Doris Lessing's narrator says about Susan Rawlings: "Susan saw herself as she had been at twenty-eight, unmarried; and then again somewhere about fifty, blossoming from the root of what she had been twenty years before. As if the essential Susan were in abeyance, as if she were in cold storage"(A MAN AND TWO WOMEN 286). Susan Rawlings' ritualized travel "to room nineteen" of FRED'S HOTEL to sit alone, however, is nothing like Nan's uncharted journey, during which she pays close attention to both self and the big world beyond one's self. Since most of us who imagine ourselves on solo trips to anywhere will choose close encounters only of the mental kind, I say, "Let Berg take you where you may need to go. Nan will lead the way and make the experience interesting." I'm talking to the guys out there too, but not the "babies." If you're under forty, you should wait at least a decade to pull THE PULL OF THE MOON off a shelf -- unless you're trying to understand your mother.P.S. I have not yet read Berg's "On Writing THE PULL OF THE MOON," which follows the novel in the edition that I have, because I did not want the author's comments to affect my review.
What do You think about The Pull Of The Moon (2004)?
This book brought up a lot of hidden emotions in me. The book made me think about the life that we live and the life that we miss living, the possibilities we've missed. Also about aging. It was a good book, yet it also was a hard one to read. Makes you face things you have buried and tried to forget. About settling for second best...or just settling for one way of life when there were so many other choices we could have made. Now as we are entering the golden years, looking back on what we've missed out on is hard. The book made me think of Anne Tyler's writing.
—Julie
This is the first book of Elizabeth Berg's that I was truly disapointed in. I have absolutely adored everything thing else of hers that I have read but this character was irritating. Nan is a spoiled, self centered woman with nothing better to do than spend way too much time feeling sorry for herself. Nan's problem?? She's 50. At 50 yrs old, she doesn't have to work, can spend hundreds of $$ on cosmetics that she promptly throws in the trash, her husband can afford to retire at any time, she has a strong, smart , independent daughter who is in college and all Nan can do is hope her butt looks good to younger men.. I couldn't wait to be done with Nan, she was extremely shallow, self important, spoiled and aggravating. I also found the conversations she would have with total strangers to be unrealistic.
—Camille
I had read Year of Pleasures a few years ago and enjoyed it very much, but for some reason didn’t read anything else by Berg until now. Pull of the Moon made me wonder why. I remembered as I read this latest book that her novels are the sort I gulp down, written with beautifully crafted thoughts in a simple way. I also remembered that she often wrote as if echoing my thoughts.In Pull of the Moon, this feeling was even more pronounced perhaps because Berg’s character, Nan, is 50 and struggling within the ‘sticky middle’ of youth and old age. I’m a couple years younger and not able to completely relate to Nan in every aspect of her experience, but it’s close enough to resonate.”I am preoccupied with my body,” Nan writes in her journal. Overly watchful of change. It’s like being a teenager again, without the cuteness. Without the promise. The book, written as alternating letter and journal entries, begins with Nan’s first letter to her husband, written from the road after leaving him a note that she’s left on a road trip of sorts. In the letter, she tells him that she’s sorry she said she’d only be gone a couple days, because she’s not ready to come back yet. She assures him she loves him and she’s safe, but that she needs this time to think. ”Martin, I am fifty years old. The time of losses is upon me. Maybe that’s it. I don’t know. I saw Kotex in the drugstore the other day and began to weep. Then I saw a mother with a very little girl, helping her pick out crayons, and this, too, undid me. I had to leave without buying what I came for.”Nan is struggling through menopause and with her sense of identity. She freely admits she chose to be a stay-at-home mother and that she fiercely loved that period of her life, but realizes she’s unsure how to define herself now that that part of her life is over. Some of the observations Nan makes about being a young mother are pitch perfect. In one of the letters she writes to her husband she talks about how she both loved and lived for their daughter, but how, at times, she “could feel some brightness of mind dulling” in the mundane day-to-day task of caring for a child and home. “It is such a violent love, that of a mother for a young child. And I had to be there no matter the cost.” I perfectly remember that time of my life and how I would have begged, borrowed, and stolen to remain home with and continue to care for Austin. At the same time, I can remember lamenting, “I feel like my brain is leaking out my ear!” It was crucial that I be the one to perform all the mundane tasks necessary to raise her even though they sometimes made me feel my brain was atrophying. “I made her baby food. I picked out her toys and clothes. I took her to school every day, I pulled her shades down for her naps, I took her to the doctor, I braided her hair and buckled her shoes, and mounted her artwork on the refrigerator. And I wanted to. I wanted to.”The letter/journal form of the book gives Berg license to ramble a bit, but it works in this case. Nan’s thoughts and impressions on being female are visited through different moments in her life. She touches on the subject of gender roles, how a certain freedom is lost once girls reach puberty, how women both anxiously await and then loathe their periods, and how when that time of their lives is over, they grieve it. Berg also revisits, through Nan, the different periods and nuances of women’s sexuality, from their first time, to the expectations, to the waning desire. This particularly rang true: ”I think every woman I know has a story like that, some incident of paralyzed humiliation involving a man and sex.”I suppose this book resonated so strongly for me because I read it on trip back to Delaware from New York City after moving our twenty-one-year-old daughter into her first apartment. It struck me that even though I’m in the ‘sticky middle’ of my life and the role I most identified with (stay-at-home mother) is over, there remains in me the girl I was and the young woman I became. As Augusten Burroughs said of this book¸ “the present tucked inside this book is the realization that you still are the child you once were — you just never take your watch off anymore.”
—Amy
