The Best of Us by Joyce Maynard

It is an unimaginable thing when someone we dearly love becomes terminally ill. In Joyce Maynard's The Best of Us, Joyce shares with her readers the sweet love story of meeting her second husband, Jim, when she is nearly sixty years old and all the hopes and dreams the two of them have for a long life together. Those dreams are dashed, however, when barely a year into the marriage Jim is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Before we reach that diagnosis, we get quite a long back story on Joyce herself and even a little about Jim and what their lives were like before they met, their first marriages, and their relationships with their children. When Maynard does begin telling the readers about falling in love with Jim and their marriage, it is a lovely story. It provides hope for anyone who has been single for a long time and still wishes to find a partner.

I struggled with this book. As much as I wanted to like it, the story had some serious stumbling blocks. Maynard is honest about some things that not everyone would admit to, which I suppose makes her brave, but I'm not sure I can say that I like her. I find it difficult to read a memoir by someone I consider unlikable. The book was also fairly repetitive. She mentions certain things so many times that I'm not sure she realizes she is repeating herself or if she just really wants to be sure the reader didn't miss the point. She really likes skinny dipping; her first husband somehow ended up with the dream farm she bought herself when she was nineteen; she loves to dance alone in the middle of a crowd, making herself the center of attention. Also the timeline is really wonky and their are no clear changes between the present in the story and a flashback, making it difficult for the reader to keep track. Finally, toward the end she mentions a Facebook community that has been following her posts about Jim's health crisis and the disjointed flow suddenly makes sense. This book sounds almost exactly like she has just printed out all her Facebook updates and stapled them together and slapped a hardcover on the front.

There were good things, too. I learned a lot about pancreatic cancer and about being a caregiver for a terminally ill loved one. I appreciate the author's willingness to be open and honest, but the risk in that is that the reader may not like what she has to share. I'm sorry I didn't like this book. I really wanted to connect with the author and her situation, but that just didn't happen.