Buy This Book!

More than two years ago, one of my dearest friends was at a critical point in the writing of her second novel: she needed readers to critique it. Do I have some articulate readers for you! I said. I put up a request here, got an avalanche of offers, hooked her up with many of them, and now:

Buy this book, not least because you helped write it (the “anonymous readers at www.doctormama.blogspot.com” are acknowledged in it!).

It’s also a fantastic book.

Christina was my very first running partner. We have over the years shared spectacular runs in Eastern Europe, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, the Catskills — and many runs that were unremarkable except in that they gave us a precious chance to talk. Christina is the sort of friend who can say exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. When I was fretting over whether I should be seeing TH — was I supposed to fool around with someone six years younger who was not looking for marriage? She said, “Forget about what other people think you should do. Have fun.” So if not for her … And Christina is another battle-scarred veteran of the infertility wars; she helped me through that process. Then when HB was a newborn, I recall sitting in bed sobbing, failing miserably at nursing this wailing alien, and Christina called. She efficiently diagnosed the problem and gently reassured me that I was neither insane nor a failure. She was and is a lifeline.

Children and work, and my dislike of the phone, have kept us from hanging out in recent years, and one of my post-small-child fantasies is that I will spend a lot more time sitting in her kitchen drinking one of her ubiquitous cups of tea.

Coming up: an interview with the author! Anything in particular you’d like me to ask her?