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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
BEAUTIFUL, SIMPLY, BEAUTIFUL, September 3, 2001
I have just discovered the magic that is Elizabeth Berg in the last year. I began with "Pull of the Moon" and am gliding my way through the remainder of her precious works. "Durable Good's" is her first book which is amazing when you read the stellar quality of this effort. Katie, a tender, blossoming 12 year old, steals your heart at first page and never let's go. Berg writes effectively in choppy paragraphs the feelings, the observations, the problems, the joys, the experiences of our Katie. Exactly like a child would think....darting from one subject to another without elongated deliberations. So magical and beautiful, that the more maudlin theme of this book can be digested by the reader with the hopefulness of a twelve year old girl. This is brilliant, impassioned, wise, cultured writing. Elizabeth Berg never fails to thrill me with her inventive techniques and tender stories.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Coming of Age novel, March 12, 2001
Durable Goods is the story of young Katie, a pre-adolescent girl that is anxious to grow up and at the same time is dealing with things that the average teenager shouldn't have to go through. She's just lost her mother to cancer, her father beats both her and her sister Diane, and she feels often that she's all alone. She misses her mother terribly,and often envisions seeing and talking to her mother as if she had never passed away. The book is written from her point of view, so the reader learns about Katie from a more personal perspective. The plot line in Durable Goods is thin, I thought, but the author created a very likeable character in Katie. The first half of the book builds up the character and introduces her relationships with her father (abusive) and sister (sometimes friend, sometimes enemy) and her best friend CherylAnne, who is two years older and is very wise and womanly for her age. Katie is a strong person for her young years, and that is what makes her so likeable. Dealing with the death of her mother and her confrontations with her father show how strong she really is. Whereas Dianne tries to escape from her problems, katie tries to deal with them. This is Elizabeth Berg's first novel, but it was not the first novel of hers that I've read. I think it was an impressive first novel and would be a good place to start for anyone new to her books. Other books I'd highly recommend is Joy School, which continues the saga of katie, and What We Keep, a story about an older woman who is trying to deal with her past.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
(3.5) Family matters, February 6, 2005
Berg focuses on a transitional period in the life of a twelve-year old (going on thirteen), Katie Nash. Her mother recently died from cancer and Katie lives with eighteen-year old sister, Diane, in a delicate emotional balance, avoiding the father, who has a volatile temper and frequently hits the girls. The violence is nothing new. Even when their mother was alive, the father took out his aggression on his daughters. Army brats, their lives are constantly in flux, moving whenever the father is posted to another base.
The father's rage is a fact of life for his daughters, the family's constant preoccupation with appeasement common behavior, especially when the mother's death leaves each of them hollow with grief. Katie's best friend lives next door, a girl two years older who guides Katie through feminine mysteries and rituals defined by glossy magazines, endless grooming details that insure success with the opposite sex.
Katie finds solace in her role models, sister and best friend, but has begun a solitary journey of self-discovery that is made more piquant by the inevitable yearning for her mother at this critical time in her young life. The best friend is predictable, but sister Diane is ready to break away from a life controlled by their father's narrow constraints and senseless rules. The sisters make a fateful decision, but it is tempered by Katie's shifting loyalties, her inability to make appropriate choices, given her vulnerability and immaturity. Grasping the familiar, Katie finds a new perspective on letting go and the chimerical nature of loss, that some things stay even when they're gone.
Berg's plain-spoken narrative navigates an adolescent passage into the real world, where even forgiveness is possible and change hovers on the horizon. The simple prose belies the impact of grief and the complications of growing up, the profound juxtaposed with the mundane. If there is a flaw in Durable Goods, it is the dissonance of the father's habitual violence and his passive acceptance of changes wrought by his daughters' actions. That Katie clings to her father is natural enough, but his brutality is a serious issue. The victim returns willingly to her abuser, desperate for any emotional connection in lieu of none at all. Grief is no excuse: is the brute not still a brute? Luan Gaines/2005.
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