A review by sonia_reppe
The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty

3.0

Being a mother, this serious, thoughtful book gave me a lot to think about. I empathized with the main character and the tension she felt in her relationship to her teenage daughter, and her worry for her son. Her life-long problem of connecting with people is never so sad as when she is unable to reach out to her daughter in a time of tragedy. Curiously, this is the first time in her life she regrets not being able to connect to people and not having any friends—it's never bothered her before? At times I thought this character was headed in a different direction (like nervous breakdown) but the book doesn't bring her to that point. Her relationship with her own mother is never resolved and her relationship with her daughter never has a big turning point. Near the end, she comes to some fuller understanding of her daughter, which is that she doesn't understand her, and the end just quietly fizzles out. Moriarty's first book, The Center of Everything, is lively, entertaining and funny, but there is no humor in The Rest of Her Life, as if Moriarty is trying to be very reverent about the subject matter. Considering her gift for humor, I missed it in this book. I wouldn't mind so much if she had made this a full-blown tragedy, but everyone decides to be nice to eachother in the end.