Entangled: A Chronicle of Late Love

by Don Asher, Lois Goodwill

Don, an eighty-year-old jazz pianist, and Sarah, a sixty-nine-year old clinical psychologist, spent twenty-two relatively content years together as monogamous lovers, despite their wildly different interests and personalities. One summer at her youngest son's wedding, a handsome, seventy-year-old former Jesuit priest asked Sarah to dance. She soon fell head over heels into an intoxicating, passionate relationship with him that belied their years. After a beguiling and giddy courtship, that romance abruptly blew up in her face. Told from the alternating points of view of Don and Sarah, Entangled is an honest and moving memoir in two voices about the devastating consequences of a love affair gone wrong. When Sarah returns to Don, he discovers that she has kept a journal of her affair and agrees to join her in reconstructing, through writing, what has happened to them. Entangled is the culmination of this courageous undertaking in the face of pain and betrayal. Their willingness to confront difficult truths has led to a relationship that, while changed and injured by circumstance, was still a rich and vibrant source of friendship and acceptance.

176 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2011

About the author

Dr. Lois Goodwill is a retired clinical psychologist. Born in Montreal, Canada, she holds degrees from McGill University in Montreal and the Wright Institute in Berkeley. She enjoys attending theater and symphony performances and volunteer work, and is an enthusiastic hiker and walker. She is the mother of four children and grandmother of eleven. She lives in San Francisco."

Reviews

[Jenny K · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because I was fascinated by the premise: the story of a love triangle involving people who would be medically classified as elderly (over 65). What would it be like? How do they compare to their youthful experiences? As I head into old age, about 25 years away from those in the book, I know this is all around the corner, and I was curious.

The previous reviewer said they overwrote, and while I agree, it's still smooth prose that one can speed through quickly. It was addictive to go from one chapter to the next, and I finished it in a day. To be honest, this love triangle feels a bit similar to a love triangle in one's 30's though the love triangle appears to resolve way more quickly than usual, which I would attribute to one's ability to recognize and deal with BS quicker in older age.

There are those who might judge the people within and pass it on to the book. I'm not going to judge a book based on the people involved--if I read and enjoyed a book, enjoyed hating the characters, that's still a good book, in my opinion. But I don't have to in this case - these are normal flawed humans with normal faults having normal messed up human interactions, and written beautifully.

If you are in any way interested in the human condition and how people love, connect, and disconnect, in all their different glorious ways (do you read Modern Love in the New York Times?), then here is a good, long story. The people involved are older, white, financially comfortable, so I'm not going to say their story is everybody's story, but it adds to the mix, and I enjoyed it immensely.

(It probably helps I live in San Francisco and recognize a lot of the settings in this book).

[Judith · Rating 1 out of 5]

A shocking book, revelatory of the vainglorious selfishness of one author, the heartsickening pain of the other. Both of them overwrite. Both are tragic: one for the helplessness of his neurotic heart, one for her lack of insight into her own character. I read every word avidly. Ave atque vale, old friend.