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107th out of 2,694 books
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7,456 voters
One True Thing
A mother.A daughter.A shattering choice.
From Anna Quindlen, bestselling author of Black and Blue, comes a novel of life, love and everyday acts of mercy.
"A triumph."
--San Francisco Chronicle
From the Paperback edition....more
From Anna Quindlen, bestselling author of Black and Blue, comes a novel of life, love and everyday acts of mercy.
"A triumph."
--San Francisco Chronicle
From the Paperback edition....more
Paperback, 320 pages
Published
August 8th 2006
by Random House Trade Paperbacks
(first published 1994)
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There are some authors I'm interested in reading, but instead of reading a variety of their books, I end up rereading the same book repeatedly. One True Thing is one of those books for me. I keep thinking I'm going to read Black and Blue or Object Lessons, but read this instead. Maybe I should add a bookshelf called "books I'm tired of re-reading".
To me, the best parts of the book are her descriptions. She paints very vivid word pictures. Once or twice during my most recent reading I was so take...more
To me, the best parts of the book are her descriptions. She paints very vivid word pictures. Once or twice during my most recent reading I was so take...more
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This is the book that changed everything for me ... I used to HATE reading! I was a slow reader and my mind would wander while I read. During one of my last semesters of college, I took an elective course called Death and Dying. Instead of a final exam, we were required to read this book and then write a paper about it. I did not enjoy reading, so I was pleasantly surprised when I couldn't put the book down! This was almost 10 years ago, so I'm not sure if the book was really that remarkable, bu...more
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This is one of my all-time favorite books.
You can read the synopsis for yourself, but in short Ellen Gulden is a Harvard-educated writer living in New York, on the cusp of greatness. Her father is a Lit. Professor and Ellen connects with him, more than her stay-at-home mother, Kate.
Kate is diagnosed with cancer, and with the urging of her father, Ellen leaves the city and moves home to help take care of her mother and the chores. The mind-numbing existence her mother leads quickly takes a toll...more
You can read the synopsis for yourself, but in short Ellen Gulden is a Harvard-educated writer living in New York, on the cusp of greatness. Her father is a Lit. Professor and Ellen connects with him, more than her stay-at-home mother, Kate.
Kate is diagnosed with cancer, and with the urging of her father, Ellen leaves the city and moves home to help take care of her mother and the chores. The mind-numbing existence her mother leads quickly takes a toll...more
4 likes · like · see review
I have been wanting to read this book, but have been reluctant to start it. I feared it would strike too close to home, and bring up many feelings of my mom's illness and death. The book did do so, of course, but in a good way...it was oddly cathartic, reassuring, and comforting. Moving the furniture around to fit the hospital bed in the living room...looking at the house layout and stairs in a whole new way. The line where she says she thinks it would be difficult to bury someone in the beginni...more
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I am loving this book, as I have the other Qundlen books I've read recently. And now I'm back on goodreads--I've been MIA while dealing with hospital, convalescent hospital, and now assisted living.
3 likes · like · see review
I really like Anna Quindlen. I think she writes very real, ordinary books that show a hidden, beautiful side of human nature. An especially poignant story about mother-daughter relationships.
I'm often distrustful when critics call a novel remarkable, but in this case they are right. Funny thing was that when this was made into a movie, and I heard Meryl Streep was in it, I thought she was all wrong for the part-- because I envisioned her as the daughter (ie ,i>my age) not as the mother, who should have been my mom's age. I laughed when I learned she played the mom, because of course, that was good casting. :)
This is one of those books that haunts you long after you read it. It is about the relationships between an adult daughter, her dying mother and the father she adores. The daughter puts her career on hold to return home, as her father demands, to care for her mother. I read it a year or so after caring for my own dying mother, and several passages were so perfectly descriptive of the emotionally charged experience that I was moved to tears. Quindlen writes as though from experience, though her o...more
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I must have read this book three times since its publication and each time I read it, I have even more of an appreciation for the depth of Quindlen's characters; her descriptive writing and paragraphs that you can ponder for hours. The dynamics of a family are so intricate and impossible to define, especially as a child. For the very best description of this book, read the review by Tim Appelo; he says it all and I couldn't agree more. Normally, I hate when my favorite book becomes a movie but Z...more
I read this book shortly after my own Mom died, so it was especially painful. I loved the book and cook club and how the daughter finally was able to establish an adult relationship with a woman she had totally misjudged. The book explores being pulled painfully out of our childhood misconceptions about who our family members are. The daughter gained a mother just to lose her, and lost a father after being forced to see him exposed to the harsh light of reality rather than through childish adora...more
Lame book review from BookCrossing, part the first:
Wow, I cried a lot in this book!
When a book has been made into a movie, I never prefer having the picture on the cover. Nevertheless, I still read this book :) The problem was, though, that I kept picturing the actors on the cover as the characters in the book, which bugged me. However, if you had to picture actors as the characters you were reading, the mom, dad and Ellen were not a problem as portrayed (there's only one son pictured on the cov...more
Wow, I cried a lot in this book!
When a book has been made into a movie, I never prefer having the picture on the cover. Nevertheless, I still read this book :) The problem was, though, that I kept picturing the actors on the cover as the characters in the book, which bugged me. However, if you had to picture actors as the characters you were reading, the mom, dad and Ellen were not a problem as portrayed (there's only one son pictured on the cov...more
The Book One True Thing is a story based on a mother – daughter relationship. The Gulden family consisted of George, Brain, Jeff, Kate, and Ellen. Ellen Gulden had a life of her own in the big apple. Until she receives the terrible news that her mother, Kate, was diagnose with ovarian cancer. As for her father, George, was emotionally unavailable forcing Ellen to care for her mother. She is given the opportunity to truly know her mother. While she cares for Kate, Ellen realizes that the image s...more
It's taken a long time to read this relatively short book (just over 300 pages). It's a very difficult story to read emotionally, but it's also beautifully written and the words just flow from the page.
The stark, honest and at times brutal description of Kate's battle with cancer, and Ellen's battle with her reactions to her Mother's disease is heart-breakingly painful to read. Any woman who is, or has been, very close to their own Mother will find it difficult to stop themselves from putting E...more
The stark, honest and at times brutal description of Kate's battle with cancer, and Ellen's battle with her reactions to her Mother's disease is heart-breakingly painful to read. Any woman who is, or has been, very close to their own Mother will find it difficult to stop themselves from putting E...more
My mother passed away (not from cancer), but from heart failure due to a condition called Mitral Regurgitation. All she really needed was a valve replacement but it was too late. My mom's death was very sudden & unexpected on January 24, 2000. In any case, my mother told me she loved this book. I had to read it...especially after she passed away. The story is a sad one about a mother who is dying of cancer with a bit of a twist about 'who killed her'! It taught me that time is precious and t...more
Besides the difficult story line of a daughter taking care of her mother through final months of cancer, I was really moved by the relationship that was forged between mother and daughter during this time period.
I think Quindlen did a beautiful job of describing the struggle that many women endure (smart vs. sweet) and how we have trouble understanding one another. Women don't have to be either or. Sometimes, you can be strong enough to be both.
We can also learn to love and appreciate our... (sh...more
I loved this book. It's a rare thing when a book is so engrossing that I can shut out the world around me entirely without any effort. I was lost in the characters from the first chapter. What a writer! I've never read Anna Quindlen before and I'm dying to read some of her other books now. She has a way of making you feel as if you are living in their house with them, absorbing their raw pain, their beauty and despair. I started reading this book to help me slow down on Reading 'Cutting for Ston...more
A novel told in the first person about a young woman who is asked by her strange (and estranged) father to come home and take care of her mother who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer of some internal organs. She didn’t want to do it because she had not got along well with her mother and father. She does reluctantly come home and through the process of taking care of her mother, she learns more about her mother and her father and about herself. The mother dies toward the end with what...more
Well executed, complex story about a family dynamic. The flushed out personalities of the father, mother, and three children. All so different, and yet how hopelessly wrong they are about each other. It reminds me that most of us consider our own family dysfunctional, no matter how bland the "real" issues may be.
The technique to invite the reader into the family by starting with Ellen in jail, and then going back to learn how she got there was unusual but effective. It is only after getting pas...more
The technique to invite the reader into the family by starting with Ellen in jail, and then going back to learn how she got there was unusual but effective. It is only after getting pas...more
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The book starts with a prologue with Ellen Gulden sitting in jail, accused of mercy-killing her mother, Katherine. Then, it goes back a few months to the heartbreak of Katherine's cancer diagnosis. Ellen's father pressures her into quitting her journalism job, and coming home to care for her mother. Katherine is a warm woman and a perfect homemaker, while Ellen has always been very cerebral and cool like her father. As Katherine's health declines, she makes use of this last opportunity to share...more
This novel by Anna Quindlen is a sad tale about a mother and daughter and their efforts at mending a relationship in the face of tragedy. In the opening, which is probably the best I've ever read, the mother has just died after a long, deteriorating battle with cancer and the daughter, now in jail, is accused of killing her.
The story is mostly about the daughter, Ellen Gulden, a Harvard grad and successful writer at a New York magazine, and her mother, Catherine, a creative Martha Stewart type w...more
The story is mostly about the daughter, Ellen Gulden, a Harvard grad and successful writer at a New York magazine, and her mother, Catherine, a creative Martha Stewart type w...more
Anna Quindlen is a genius with words and using those words to describe family dynamics. She does this masterfully in One True Thing. It's a story about a daughter, Ellen, caring for her dying mother, Kathy Gulden, with a subplot about mercy killing, but it's Quindlen's writing skill that makes it far more than a simplistic page-turner. While caring for her mother, and even long after her mother's death, Ellen sheds her illusions about her family, and learns how to truly know and understand their...more
Ellen returns home reluctantly when her mother is diagnosed as being terminally ill to take over her care. Touching story of how she bonds with her mother in those last few months after always striving to obtain her father's praise. Hard to read in places as Kate starts to fail and depends heavily on Ellen.
After Kate's death Ellen is arrested on suspicion of killing her mother with a fatal overdose of opiates and the book tells the tale of Ellen's arrest and subsequent trial and her ability to c...more
After Kate's death Ellen is arrested on suspicion of killing her mother with a fatal overdose of opiates and the book tells the tale of Ellen's arrest and subsequent trial and her ability to c...more
One True Thing is a book that fascinated me from beginning to end. Ellen Gulden is one of those self assured women, well situated in New york City when she gets the call to come home and care for her Mother who is dying of cancer. A very reluctant Ellen finally made the decision to do what her father expected her to do, so she packed her bags and started on a long journey of experience and enlightenment. The troubled relationship between she and her father made it harder for her to respond to he...more
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Summary of the plot: A call came from her father that changed everything. He demanded that she quit her job, come home, and take care of her mother who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. While growing up she hardly even knew her mother, preferring instead the company of her father, an English professor.. She was more than a little insulted by the demand, but ended up being her mother's closest companion for the elder Gulden's last six months of life.
The autopsy revealed an overdose of the...more
The autopsy revealed an overdose of the...more
There are moments in this book when Anna Quindlen, with her famed intellect and ability to deeply analyze the perplexities of life, death, family ties, sickness, and the complexities of the individual and the choices one has to make, that are so incredibly, vividly true, I would mistakenly believe I was reading a memoir. Her writing is wrought with such deep understanding, and there are more than several statements or paragraphs that elicit 'aha' moments or nod that can only mean, 'she gets it!'...more
I decided to read this book very quickly as I tend to take on the mood of the books I read and I didn't want this story to color my days for very long. I love Quindlen's prose and further enjoy explorations of family dynamics--especially mother-daughter and daughter-father relationships--so it was a must read on my list.
In spite of my attempt to gloss through it, this book managed to sink deeply. It is a gorgeously crafted--if a bit didactic--story. Quindlen is a wordsmith of the first order whe...more
In spite of my attempt to gloss through it, this book managed to sink deeply. It is a gorgeously crafted--if a bit didactic--story. Quindlen is a wordsmith of the first order whe...more
This was a good one-
A Mother is Dying, a Daughter takes care of her as she does....................
Very interesting look at this very realistic situation, happening more and more as our parents live longer. Tho the mother in this book is only 46. I am 43- So that's no where near old the way I see it.
What if your mom had terminal cancer, and you had to care for her? Everything that happens in this book is very possible and very real. I enjoyed this book, even tho it was very sad, obviously, T...more
A Mother is Dying, a Daughter takes care of her as she does....................
Very interesting look at this very realistic situation, happening more and more as our parents live longer. Tho the mother in this book is only 46. I am 43- So that's no where near old the way I see it.
What if your mom had terminal cancer, and you had to care for her? Everything that happens in this book is very possible and very real. I enjoyed this book, even tho it was very sad, obviously, T...more
I love Anna Quindlen. I love the way she uses her words, I love her essays and observations, and I'd love to take her to lunch and pick her brain about writing and just bask in her greatness. That said, because I love Quindlen's writing so much, I'm inclined to read anything she puts out -- no matter the topic. "One True Thing" is a book that I'm glad that I read, but it was incredibly hard to get through. It's the story of a young journalist called home to care for her mother as she struggles w...more
Dec 02, 2008
Melissa
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anyone
Recommended to Melissa by:
My mom
An amazing, heart wrenching story. This book literally brought me to tears, several times. The novel is about a twenty something girl, Ellen, who is asked by her father to come home and help take care of her dying mother. In doing so she learns a lot about life, true love and the family ties that bind us even if sometimes they are hard to see. At first the protagonist is resentful focusing on all the differences between her life as a metropolitan writer and her homemaker mother. The relationship...more
An accident of birth prevents me from fully understanding this book. I imagine that had I been born female, my entire childhood and life would have contained a different undercurrent: the expectation of being a caretaker. Males don't get that. I can see, I can sense, I can empathize... but not feel. Not like this. This upbringing is, I dare say, a true dividing wall between the sexes... yet Quindlen does such a damn good job of writing that it's like the wall is but mesh. One True Thing moved me...more
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Anna Quindlen is an American journalist and opinion columnist whose New York Times column, Public and Private, won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992.
She began her journalism career in 1974 as a reporter with The New York Post. Between 1977 and 1994 she held several posts at the New York Times. She left journalism in 1995 to become a full-time novelist. She currently writes a bi-weekly colu...more
More about Anna Quindlen...
She began her journalism career in 1974 as a reporter with The New York Post. Between 1977 and 1994 she held several posts at the New York Times. She left journalism in 1995 to become a full-time novelist. She currently writes a bi-weekly colu...more
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“I wondered why I hadn't loved that day more, why I hadn't savored every bit of it...why I hadn't known how good it was to live so normally, so everyday. But you only know that, I suppose, after it's not normal and every day any longer.”
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“A week in the hospital she had told us. A hysterectomy, she had said. It had seemed unremarkable to me in a woman of forty-six long finished with childbearing, although every day that I grow older I realize there is never anything unremarkable about losing any part of what makes you female - a breast, a womb, a child, a man.”
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