Review: The Art of Saying Goodbye by Ellyn Bache

Title: The Art of Saying Goodbye
Author: Ellyn Bache
Genre/Age: Contemporary, women's fiction, adult
Publication: 2011
Source: For review, TLC Tours

Summary: Paisley is a gorgeous, magnetic, and energetic woman that captures everyone's attention with her charm and inner goodness. She lives in an affluent neighborhood, along with five other women friends who are all very different, including Iona, the woman in her 60's who is quite older than the others, and is a bit mean-spirited, and Julianne, a nurse who has a psychic ability to feel her patient's pain. Also included are Ginger, a business owner, and Andrea, Paisley's best friend and mother of a cancer survivor. Because of their differences, the women aren't as close as you'd think, but Paisley binds them all together in some ways.

Then they are hit with tragedy. Paisley, the strong, lovable, and popular woman, has cancer and it has begun to travel through her body. All the women cope differently with this news, and the story alternates between the women's different viewpoints so that we learn each of their stories, and find out how they are coping as well.

My Thoughts: When I first heard about this book through TLC tours, I knew right away I would need to read it. I loved the sound of it: a group of female friends dealing with their leader having cancer. Right up my alley. I'm having a little bit of a hard time, though, gathering my thoughts about this one. I would say I liked it, but it was much different than I'd expected so I was slightly let down because I went into it thinking I would LOVE it.

What I can say is that this is the kind of story that just begs to be read slowly in order to take it all in. The writing is eloquent and not to be rushed through at all, full of minute details and beautiful language. I appreciate words and language, of course, but I feel that the eloquence sometimes downplayed the actual story at times.

What I do love is that all the women have their own story, their own past and that the novel focuses on all of the women equally. The novel shifts POV from one character to the next throughout. I wanted to know each character, and often found myself flipping back to remember all of the details of their own stories. It was a little bit difficult to keep track of everything at times, like who was married to who, and which kids were theirs, etc. but they all had pretty interesting stories.

The friendship between the women wasn't really what I expected. Andrea was the only one that was actually close with Paisley. Most of the other women were more like acquaintances to her, with some sort of a tie to Paisley from the past. This was kind of disappointing too.

All in all, I did like the story. It was written in a unique manner, with Paisley having flashbacks in her chapters, and the other women alternating narration in the other chapters. The plot could have been more centrally focused rather then jumping around all over the place, and I feel that the author could have focused more on the actual story than her writing style. I did want to keep reading though to see how it would all end and would recommend this to those of you who really appreciate beautiful writing above all else in a story, and enjoy very character driven books.

My Rating: 3.5/5