The Best of the Backlist: Elizabeth Berg

The Best of the Backlist

A look at worthy authors you may not know, focusing on their entire collection of in-stock backlist titles.  The backlist is a great way to meet some new authors and get a sense of their work.

Elizabeth Berg

Elizabeth Berg’s novels are complex and rich.  Women especially may enjoy her books, although any reader whose idea of a good book includes well-developed (though not always likeable) characters and great dialog will find something in her vast repertoire.  Her main focus is relationships of all sorts:  parents, sibs, husbands and wives--across the lifespan—generally with an underlying theme centering on what makes us love the people we love.  All her books have a "homey" feel to them--you know these people; their stories may even be yours. 

Here is a “short take” of ten of her twenty books, in no particular order:  

Open House (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780345435163
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 5/2001
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Open House is my favorite Berg novel.  Samantha needs a focus, a plan, and money after her husband leaves her.  She turns her home into a boarding house of sorts, and starts to collect friends and others who help her to set her life to right.  But she keeps focused on a future that looks like her past:  one that includes her husband and no boarders, one where she knew what would happen each day.  As time goes on,  however, Sam's friends and family and boarders show her that right here, right now, her life can be wonderful.  As Sam's mother tells Sam "most young people today are so focused on tomorrow that they forget about today."  And while what’s happening today may not be what Sam thought she wanted, she finds that maybe her idealized life was not so ideal for her, after all. 

Range of Motion (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780425168769
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Berkley Trade, 4/2000
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Range of Motion is one of Berg’s older books—my first introduction to her and to me it packed a punch.  Lainey's husband Jay is in a coma due to a freak accident.  While trying to make sense of the impossible and while trying to cope with the life difficulties she could never anticipate, she refuses to believe he will never emerge or move.  She sets out on a one-woman quest to bring him out of his coma and back to life.  Her supportive friends with their own personal challenges (including truly "not there" husbands who are only physically present, and who are more distant than Jay).  She paints a portrait of women as the ultimate caregivers who look to relationships to make them whole. 

We Are All Welcome Here (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780812971002
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 4/2007
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We Are All Welcome Here is one of Berg's forays into novels set not now, not here, and not with only adult white women as central characters.  In Mississippi, 1964, a young girl on the verge of womanhood rebels against everything--but especially the real demands of her mother, a polio victim who depends on Diana and her helper, the indispensable Peacie, for everything.  But in 1964, the times were a 'changin, and the relationship among the three women becomes as turbulent as the times.   

Never Change (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780743411332
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Washington Square Press, 5/2002
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Never Change:  Imagine living your peaceful life, content to remember your unrequited passions (and to create, recreate, and revisit them as you please) of youth as only a distant memory--one that you don't dare take out and examine too often.  Myra Lipinski is that woman--she's single, self-sufficient, and generally disconnected to painful moments of her past--until her past walks into her life in the form of a man she once loved, now dying.  Their relationship is by necessity short, but Myra changes and opens in that small amount of time, even knowing that she will (again) lose the love she always wanted.  

The Year of Pleasures (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780812970999
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 3/2006
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A Year of Pleasures begins with what seems like a rash move:  newly-widowed Betta leaves her home in Boston for a small town in the Midwest.  There she reconnects with old friends, finds more happiness (and more loss) with an assortment of people she meets, and slowly works on trying to live without the love she thought would sustain her.  Throughout, there are many meals, snacks, and desserts--so many connections are made "at table" that the reader more fully savors the conversations and connections among the characters.

True to Form (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780743411356
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Washington Square Press, 5/2003
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In True to Form, adolescent Katie is facing one of those horrible summers only a 13-year old can suffer:  she'll be babysitting, keeping company with a crotchety old woman, and stuck with only one friend, a lifeless, drab girl named Cynthia.  Katie sees herself as honest and true, but she does Cynthia a bad turn (as 13-year olds often do) and becomes a person she doesn't want to be.  For anyone who remembers the difficulty of doing right while still in the throes of self-absorbed teen misery, Katie's story will be familiar.  Despite the age of the main character (who also appears in two other Berg books), this novel is for everyone. 

Until the Real Thing Comes Along (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780345437396
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 6/2000
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In the offbeat and surprisingly funny Until the Real Thing Comes Along, a woman hears her biological clock ticking, but knows only one potential father.  Her best friend, Ethan...one problem:  he's gay.  So he'll never be the "real thing" husband she wants, but he can be only a father.  Patty's desire for a close relationship with Ethan and a baby of her own cloud her judgment and make her single-minded on one thing.  She is unable to see the complexities and the richness possible in the relationships she does have with her parents and friends.  In the end, those relationships are the ones that sustain her and are the real thing.  

The Art of Mending (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780812970982
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 3/2005
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The Art of Mending is one of Berg's more seriously-themed novels about family memories, old hurts, and never-healed wounds.  Laura, a quilt-maker who can sew, stitch, or mend anything, finds it impossible even years later to reconcile her family memories with those of her sister Caroline.  Two women, two stories, two people who change significantly over the course of one short family vacation.  We are reminded that forgetting certain parts of our youth, particularly those concerning the very-human frailties of our parents, is more of a blessing than a curse.    

Say When (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780743411370
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Washington Square Press, 4/2004
Other Editions of this Title
Say When.  Marital discord and divorce make regular appearances in Berg's novels, but in Say When it's the woman who has an affair, leaves her family, and provides the "how could she?" factor.  Even more strikingly is that this book is told from the husband, Griffin's, point-of-view.  When Griffin finds out that Ellen has been feeling unloved for years, and forces him to question whether Griffin's life is all superficial.  Wife?  Check.  Job? Check.  Child?  Check.  Home?  Check.  So, losing what he had made him (as well as Ellen) look deeper to determine what they really want.  

Home Safe (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780345487551
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 9/2009
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Home Safe.  Recent widow Helen feels she has no ground under her feet when her husband dies and then learns that their nest egg...isn't there anymore.  Her attempts to grab onto her older daughter Tessa like a life raft in a storm only alienates the aloof Tessa further.  Only when Helen discovers her late husband's plan to build her a safe "dream" home and only when she works to let Tessa be her own person does Helen plot a safe and sure course for herself after loss.  

…And there’s more!  Berg’s other novels are Talk Before Sleep, Pull of the Moon, Durable Goods, Family Traditions, Joy School, What We Keep, Ordinary Life, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted, and Dream When You're Feeling Blue.  She also has a Christmas story and a nonfiction title on writing.  

Talk Before Sleep (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780345491251
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 11/2006
Other Editions of this Title

The Pull of the Moon (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780425176481
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 10/2000
Other Editions of this Title

Durable Goods (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780812968149
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 5/2003
Other Editions of this Title

Joy School (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780345423092
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 3/1998
Other Editions of this Title

What We Keep (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780345423290
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 5/1999
Other Editions of this Title

Ordinary Life: Stories (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780812968132
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 5/2003
Other Editions of this Title

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation (Hardcover)

By Elizabeth Berg
$23.00
ISBN-13: 9781400065097
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Random House, 4/2008
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Dream When You're Feeling Blue (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Berg
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780345487544
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 1/2008
Other Editions of this Title