The children have grown up and moved on with their lives leaving their parents behind. After years of focusing on the needs of their children, how does a couple rebuild their relationship?
Size: 64 KB (12,098 words)
Genre: Drama
Sex Contents: No Sex
Tags: Romantic, Slow
Review by Price26 [other reviews by Price26]
Reviewed: - (Review Updated: )
I’m a huge fan of this author, but many of his tales are a little on the long side, so I don’t re-read them that often. This one is short and sweet and was worth dipping back into.
It’s a brief examination of what happens when the kids have flown the nest.
At first, Irving and Susan had welcomed the peacefulness once their daughter had moved out – now the house resembles a mausoleum. It takes Irving a while to figure out what has gone wrong with their relationship, and how to fix it.
Expect the usual quietly-understated humour, character development, subtle asides, the little domestic details that bring the settings of this story to life, good use of vocabulary, if a little terse at times. Nothing groundbreaking for LZ, but a cheering feel-good tale that you can easily finish in one sitting. Unlike Susan’s book on Kindle....
Review by Jim S [other reviews by Jim S]
Reviewed:
This is a generational story and might not appeal to all readers. I suspect this is the reason it is rated as low as it is. Its appeal is to the older reader in that a younger reader, say in their 20s, doesn't have enough life experience yet to fully appreciate the emptiness that can result in an individual living the story.
But this story is a gem. The author provides a male protagonist who makes the point that he disapproves of the current state of his marriage in a most humorous way.
The little truisms scattered through a lot of LZ's stories make them realistic. For instance, in this one appears the following:
"He just didn't see them as being attractive and thought they didn't compliment the female figure all that well. Then he realized the mannikins(sic) didn't have female figures, but were basically parodies of the female form."
When seen within the story in proper context, this is just the kind of thing that makes a story come alive. And in my mind is one of the signs of a good author.
The story/plot is good. Technically, some minor proofreading imperfections exist – missing words, incorrect verb tense, misspelling, etc. Not a lot of them. Read time was about 45 minutes for me and was time well spent.
