PenPenWrites

For those of us of a certain age–especially those of us whose children have grown up enough to leave the nest–there are some pithy, witty and heart wrenching observations of our condition in a new book,The Three Weissmans of Westport.

The book is not about empty nesters–though one of the characters, Annie, is one. It does, however, have a lot to say about that empty feeling, and the author, Cathleen Schine, manages to offer insights with words that fly along the page–even while they point a dagger at the heart. Take this one, describing Annie's sadness–she's a 50-ish single-mom–that her grown sons could not come home for the Christmas holiday, which she was spending with her mother and sister.

"For the first time that she could remember, Annie felt alone, truly and desperately alone. Even when her husband had disappeared and she had been left to fend for herself with two little boys, there had been the two little boys. Now they were gone, too. They loved her and called her and sent her e-mails and would still snuggle up to her to be petted when they were in the mood, but they were men, and though they would always be at the center of her life, she was no longer at the center of theirs."