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danubooks 's review for:
How Does that Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?
by Anna Montague
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
What exists between what is and what isn’t
Therapist Magda Eklund is nearing her 70th birthday and despite the concern of her friends and colleagues Boomer and Theo insists that she is fine. Really. Okay, maybe she still deals with some anxiety after the events of 9/11 and has refused to step on a plane ever since, but she is living her life. She works with her patients and helps them deal with their anxieties and assorted other problems, and while she still mourns the recent loss of her closest friend Sara she is making every effort to be helpful to Sara’s husband Fred, with whom she’s never gotten along. It’s only natural that she feels lonely and a bit adrift; she and Sara did everything together….movies, food, even travel….and it was Sara who always planned Magda’s birthday parties. When Boomer and Theo host a small birthday dinner for Magda and Fred shows up not only late but with his (surprise!) new girlfriend, its more than she can take. Amongst those of Sara’s possessions that Fred has been unloading upon Magda is her journal, and in it Sara was making plans for a road trip that she and Magda were to make together. Their friendship had been strained in the period before Sara’s sudden passing, and Magda thinks that maybe making that trip herself (with the urn containing Sara’s ashes along for the ride) would be a way to reach a measure of reconciliation. For someone whose profession is helping others to reveal those things they’ve hidden from themselves and/or the world, it seems that Magda has repressed a great deal of herself throughout her life…but maybe there is still time to acknowledge truths that she has avoided and in doing so start a new chapter in her life.
Friendship between women is a very tricky thing, and as the opening quote from author Patricia Highsmith says, “…friendships are the result of certain needs that can be completely hidden from both people.” Magda and Sara needed things from one another that they couldn’t, or didn’t dare, seek elsewhere. Growing up in a very strict family with Old World values, Magda wanted and felt things that her parents (in particular her mother) could not tolerate, and given the times in which she grew up it was easier for her to just not deal with those feelings. She left her midwestern home and made a career in NYC, yet still what she wanted most always seemed just out of her reach. Sara’s marriage was not what she hoped it would be but she was determined to make it at least look like she was happy, even though she never had the children she so desperately wanted and her husband’s flaws wounded her deeply. A trip the two women took to Boston changed their friendship, and Sara would die before the two could get it back on course. As Magda slowly reveals the dynamics in their relationship and her true feelings for Sara, the reader also sees the letters that Sara wrote to Magda when off travelling with Fred, which help explain just why Magda didn’t like him very much. There are so many quirky and endearing characters sprinkled throughout the book, and both Magda and Sara are very relatable. I felt that the book started out very slowly and my attention would wander a bit, but my growing fondness for Magda and my desire to see just what caused their friendship to fray kept me going. There are questions of sexuality and identity, the boundaries between friendship and marriage that must be navigated, and the role that family plays in each person’s life at the root of the story. I found it more melancholic with occasional bursts of humor than an overall funny story, but others might see it differently. The slow pacing lessened my enjoyment of the story, but the characters who inhabited the pages helped make up for that to a degree. Readers of Elizabeth Berg, Jacquelyn Mitchard and Elinor Lipman might find this novel to their liking. My thanks to NetGalley and Ecco Press for allowing me access to an early copy of this novel of loss and hope.
Therapist Magda Eklund is nearing her 70th birthday and despite the concern of her friends and colleagues Boomer and Theo insists that she is fine. Really. Okay, maybe she still deals with some anxiety after the events of 9/11 and has refused to step on a plane ever since, but she is living her life. She works with her patients and helps them deal with their anxieties and assorted other problems, and while she still mourns the recent loss of her closest friend Sara she is making every effort to be helpful to Sara’s husband Fred, with whom she’s never gotten along. It’s only natural that she feels lonely and a bit adrift; she and Sara did everything together….movies, food, even travel….and it was Sara who always planned Magda’s birthday parties. When Boomer and Theo host a small birthday dinner for Magda and Fred shows up not only late but with his (surprise!) new girlfriend, its more than she can take. Amongst those of Sara’s possessions that Fred has been unloading upon Magda is her journal, and in it Sara was making plans for a road trip that she and Magda were to make together. Their friendship had been strained in the period before Sara’s sudden passing, and Magda thinks that maybe making that trip herself (with the urn containing Sara’s ashes along for the ride) would be a way to reach a measure of reconciliation. For someone whose profession is helping others to reveal those things they’ve hidden from themselves and/or the world, it seems that Magda has repressed a great deal of herself throughout her life…but maybe there is still time to acknowledge truths that she has avoided and in doing so start a new chapter in her life.
Friendship between women is a very tricky thing, and as the opening quote from author Patricia Highsmith says, “…friendships are the result of certain needs that can be completely hidden from both people.” Magda and Sara needed things from one another that they couldn’t, or didn’t dare, seek elsewhere. Growing up in a very strict family with Old World values, Magda wanted and felt things that her parents (in particular her mother) could not tolerate, and given the times in which she grew up it was easier for her to just not deal with those feelings. She left her midwestern home and made a career in NYC, yet still what she wanted most always seemed just out of her reach. Sara’s marriage was not what she hoped it would be but she was determined to make it at least look like she was happy, even though she never had the children she so desperately wanted and her husband’s flaws wounded her deeply. A trip the two women took to Boston changed their friendship, and Sara would die before the two could get it back on course. As Magda slowly reveals the dynamics in their relationship and her true feelings for Sara, the reader also sees the letters that Sara wrote to Magda when off travelling with Fred, which help explain just why Magda didn’t like him very much. There are so many quirky and endearing characters sprinkled throughout the book, and both Magda and Sara are very relatable. I felt that the book started out very slowly and my attention would wander a bit, but my growing fondness for Magda and my desire to see just what caused their friendship to fray kept me going. There are questions of sexuality and identity, the boundaries between friendship and marriage that must be navigated, and the role that family plays in each person’s life at the root of the story. I found it more melancholic with occasional bursts of humor than an overall funny story, but others might see it differently. The slow pacing lessened my enjoyment of the story, but the characters who inhabited the pages helped make up for that to a degree. Readers of Elizabeth Berg, Jacquelyn Mitchard and Elinor Lipman might find this novel to their liking. My thanks to NetGalley and Ecco Press for allowing me access to an early copy of this novel of loss and hope.