This short novel, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, deals with a circle of women who married and had children in the ’50s somewhere in New England. Much of their story is told in flashbacks from a point in the 1990s, when they have aged and have lost many of those who had been close. As a result, we get nothing like a linear narrative, and that’s not terribly important. The relationships that these women form, the choices they have made, and how […]