"The Year of Pleasures" by Elizabeth Berg

   

"The Year of Pleasures" by Elizabeth Berg

 I distinctly remember reading the "The Year of Pleasures", by Elizabeth Berg when I was traveling from a large city to a very small town. 

In this novel Betta Nolan is left a widow after her husband's long battle with liver cancer, she is forced to rediscover herself as an individual, although for two decades she has shared interested with her now deceased husband, and she must rediscover all new interests.  

How does one recreate a new life, when they hammered out a life of routines with someone in the existence of marriage?  The writer, Berg, shows readers the year of pleasures by displaying an arrangement of pleasures that anyone can relate to so as readers can commemorate on their own pleasures and what makes them individual.

The character of  Betta Nolan begins her new life with the start of a cup of coffee everyday.  This transitions into a friendly greeting with her neighbors and then the upkeep of her new home.  She enlists the help of the neighbors as contractors and painters. She ends her days with the invitation of guests to a homely-made dinner.  

I am a romantic, in that ,I loved how the husband (before he died) created a treasure trove of small discoveries for his wife to find even after his death: a small array of trinkets she had collected from garage sales they had previously visited together.  Attached to these trinkets are small messages for the wife to open and discover one after another so that she would never feel completely alone after his death, making the mourning process slightly easier.