Customer Reviews

The Pull of the Moon

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I have never read a book that was so exquisitely tuned into the mind and feelings of the human condition. The lead character is turning 50 years old and decides to take a road trip. Oh, she's not headed anywhere special on the map, but this trip couldn't be more important.

As Nan meanders across the country on those back roads that only the towns people use, she is content to pull up and set for a spell on the porch of a woman that seems to know exactly why she came, though the two have never met. She sits down to meals in diners with complete strangers and finds she has more in common with them than she might expect.

Along the way she writes letters to her husband, honestly pouring her heart out to him, letting him know how their comfortable day to day saunter through life may not always have been all that was expected. The trip is a revelation for both of them in the end.

This is a coming of age book, it points out the wisdom that gradually permeates the mind and spirit as we ripen with time. I can't begin to tell you how revealing Berg's insights are, I got the feeling that she went through life taking notes on all of those little things that we experience and never give a thought to, little, insidious things that can impact our outlook on life in the most profoundest of manners. Read this book and I promise you won't be disappointed, you will find yourself in the midst of more than your share of "a-hah" moments and this book will make you realize just what a comforting thing that can be. 12/10/00

If you have ever been lost especially lost within yourself, you can't afford not to read this book! Elizabeth Berg gives us a story of a woman who is lost and runs away from home to find herself. The Pull of the Moon is a well-written story that is impossible to put down.

I have never read anything quite like it, and would be insulting this book's integrity if I compared it to any other book I have read. I loved everything about this book from the way it was written to the way it moved me. Words simply cannot express how wonderful this book is.

My suggestion, Buy it! Find a nice quiet place and prepare yourself to experience a range of emotions and inspiration, and fall in love with this book and its values like so many others have.

Elizabeth Berg's THE PULL OF THE MOON is the story of Nan, and her search for herself. She's in her 50's and has decided to leave her husband (temporarily) and travel the country, looking for what, she does not know. She sends letters to her husband Martin throughout this entire trip, revealing to the reader what is going on in her head as she goes from town to town, doing things she enjoyed doing but felt her husband never understood. She finds joy in the little things, taking time to talk to people along the way.

A lot of her letters are angry, some are sad. She loves her husband, but as many women feel as they approach middle age, she feels burnt out and neglected. She's been taken for granted, and she wants to change it all.

I think a lot of women will be able to relate to Nan and her journey to find herself. It's an easy read; took me only a few days to finish. I'm not 50 yet, but I could understand her frustrations. Elizabeth Berg is the master of "chick books" I think, and I always come away from one of her books with a "I can relate!" feeling. If you are an Elizabath Berg fan, this is another great read!

This is the story of a bored, rich housewife with too much time and money on her hands. She feels unsatisfied with her life at fifty--like all of her best years have passed her by--and her solution is not to try a new career, do some volunteering, or see a therapist. Instead she opts for the dramatic route and hops in her Mercedes for a solo cross-country road trip, writing increasingly insipid letters to her poor husband as she continues on her way.

Nan whines and complains about how her husband doesn't appreciate her, but we never see much about her to appreciate. Apparently he is the breadwinner, and for that he is chastised because a) they have too much money and b) he is preoccupied and c) he never followed his original dream of becoming a scientist. Yet someone has to earn the money to pay for the Mercedes, the road trip and the beach house that Nan insists they buy and decorate according to her exact specifications. For someone who boldly accuses Martin of making too much money, Nan sure does have expensive and particular tastes. It also takes a lot of chutzpah to accuse her husband of "selling out" when Nan never even reveals what, if any, dreams she ever had. She certainly gives us no indication that she has realized any of them, either.

I am not against the idea of a middle-aged woman "running away" from her life. I loved the novel "Ladder of Years" by Anne Tyler. But in that novel, we are shown what the protagonist is running from. In this one, the only indication we are given about why Nan runs away is that her husband is preoccupied and she feels old. I'm sorry, but there are too many women out there worried about feeding their families, making house payments, balancing jobs and families, etc. to make my heart bleed for Nan. And I never had any sense that she had ever put herself in Martin's (or anyone else's) shoes.

This protagonist came off as utterly spoiled and unsympathetic to me. She appeared to be a woman who has never had to worry about real issues, and thus created this false drama to make herself feel important and to draw attention to herself. Perhaps a better solution would have been for Nan to get a job and insist on seeing a counselor with Martin, rather than throwing temper tantrums at the beauty parlor or writing such gems to him as "I think we both should have had affairs."

When I enjoyed this slim change-of-life novel, I enjoyed it very much. When I did not, well, it was a sore disappointment. Berg's work has, in the past, rated high on my fiction likes, but unfortunately I won't be adding this novel to my Berg favorites.

And still. There was, as I stated earlier, much that I did enjoy about it. "The Pull of the Moon" is about Nan, apparently a financially well-off woman (because it is one of the lackings in this story that Nan does what she does with such carefree extravagance with nary a care about how to pull such things off in the "real world" most of us live in), turning 50 and not quite ready for it. This is the story of her midlife crisis. Maybe not so much a crisis to her, though, as one wonders if it might seem so to Martin, the husband she leaves behind as she suddenly takes off on a cross-country road trip to find herself at midlife. We never do find out how Martin feels about this. The book consists merely of Nan's letters back to him, one would assume posted and mailed, and the tone is usually one of "here I am, having these fine adventures without you, I'll fill you in when it suits me to return home." Nor does it ever seem to occur to her that Martin may not so readily welcome her home.

Okay, so it's an interesting journey. And Nan fulfills perhaps several fantasies of the aging woman. Taking off into the wild blue yonder with no apron strings attached. Ah, yes. If only. She travels where whim leads her, and en route has occasion to contemplate her life backwards and forwards. Many of us in the same age range, I'm sure, will identify with Nan's musings and meditations on a woman at this stage. The restlessness, the eagerness to throw off the old to embrace the new, to understand the process of aging as a woman in a society that is not particularly forgiving of it, to check our priorities, what belongs, and what deserves discarding. We hear you, Nan! She speaks of a renewed "preoccupation with the body" in the 50ish woman, only it has a different flavor now than in youth. One observes, winces, wonders, longs with melancholy, but then, ah enlightenment, realizes... not so bad. This process of crossing another threshold, it has its costs but it also has its delicious payoffs.

"I just wish I could cross over a little faster," writes Nan in another letter home to confidant Martin. Even as she observes the "formidable camaraderie" of older woman, wearing glasses as they read menus on gatherings in restaurants, self consciousness at long last abandoned, enjoying each other's company, embracing life more fully than ever.

Then there are those moments that Nan starts to resemble the cliche midlife man in his crisis of red convertibles and young eye candy seduced into affairs. She writes, oh yes, home to her husband, how she has always longed for beards on the men in her life, had wanted him to grow one (he did not), and now encounters a young bearded man, recently widowed, ever so sad, and in soothing his grief, ends up pulling him into her on-the-road bedroom -- to sleep innocently beside her (after some lush and lingering kisses) through the night. I'd love to hear Martin's response to this one.

Nan goes home to Martin. One is left to assume Martin opens the door. But one is not sure why this assumption is warranted. Here Berg fails, for many of us may long, many of us may fantasize, many of us may love a manly bearded cheek to brush against. But most of us do not abandon our faithful life partners to feed such whims, fewer partners would tolerate it, most of us couldn't afford it anyway, and perhaps none of us should expect such forgiveness for doing so. Am I being too harsh? I have followed many whims, after all, in my own life, some of them pretty wild. The difference may be, though, that all of those times have carried a cost. That, I think, is the bite of reality.

There have been several times while reading a book that I identified with a character but none quite so much as Nan from Elizabeth Berg's insightful novel The Pull of the the Moon. As I read this book I couldn't help but marvel at how well the author knew me, my thoughts and feelings eventhough we've never even met. And I imagine that I'm not alone what I say that there were many other readers who felt the same way I did.

Nan is turning 50 and her life hasn't turned out quite the way she expected. Now her only child, a daughter, is about to leave for college and she wonders where her life is headed. Unexpectedly Nan decides to take a trip which turns out to be a journey of discovery and self-renewal. Leaving a note for her husband and daughter, some clothes and a leather bound journal to record her thoughts, Nan takes to the road in her car not completely sure where shes headed to. And what she finds out about herself will have readers thinking, "I feel this way, " or "This is me," or "What will my life be like in the future."

As for last lines, this book provides some of the most memorable ones I can remember in some time. But I won't give the lines away here, instead read the book and let me know if you agree.

There is no question that Elizabeth Berg is one of the finest talents in mainstream fiction today. Her writing is unfailingly easy to read, graceful, flowing, and forthright. In those terms, this book is no exception. The main character, however, is disappointing at best. Being a woman in my late forties, I understand and experience some of the issues that this character experiences at the change of life, and Berg's descriptions of those thoughts and emotions are flawless. But the character herself is selfish and rather santimonious in my view.

First, she leaves home to "find herself" without even having the decency to tell her husband to his face. She leaves him a note. This is somehow portrayed as being brave, yet, what would we say about a man who does the very same thing?

Second, she is obviously a woman of means (having been very comfortably supported all her adult life by the man she left behind) and has absolutely no financial concerns as she takes this trek of "self discovery." I could never get over the fact that she just seemed like a spoiled brat high school girl tooling around after curfew in her new BMW convertible from Daddy. Most women who might like to escape and find themselves would not have this tremendous, seemingly unlimited financial ability to do so (at least, not without having to find a job at some point in the journey. She has obviously lived a pampered life and if she were to really discover that maybe others have not been so fortunate, that might have been a redeeming grace, but she never does quite connect with the stark reality of others.

Third, she behaves as though she has been put upon by her insensitive husband for all these years, when all I got from the reading was that he was an ordinary man living his life and supporting his family. She does finally come home, but I wonder why her husband should be happy about it. She says she has learned something from her journeys, but I don't see this character maturing at all. She plays at growing up. She plays at exploring herself, never really getting at the meat of who she is or what SHE might need to change.

I have always gotten so much from Elizabeth Berg's other novels, from her characters who have been so real and gritty. But this character is a poser, a dabbler in self-discovery, womens' rights, and growing up. She succeeds at none of these things.

Drivel! I love Elizabeth Berg's writing and recommend almost any other of her novels, but no one should bother to read this one. I wanted to slap the character Nan for being so self-pitying and whiny. Driving around in her Mercedes, wasn't it, crying in a grocery store because she could only remember her husband and daughter's favorite foods and not her own... this is a woman who needs to be doing a lot of volunteer work, not driving around to think how lost she is. Pathetic.

Always trying to grab a decent book before jumping on an airplane to the next trip, I was graced to grab this book from the shelves. Elizabeth Berg's book made my hectic world stop for 3 hours and I entered into her and Nan's world without looking back.

Although only 33 myself, I identified with Nan's desire to leave behind her life and find out who she is. This book spoke to me softly and in a way a book hasn't in a long time. I heard Nan and I understood her need to find herself among the routine of her life. Sometimes you have to walk away from your routine to find yourself. I enjoyed Nan's journey and I'm glad she took me with her.

Although sometimes a little too simplistic, I never felt while I was reading that I was being "suckered" into feeling for Nan. My emotions and responses that came forth as I read the book were genuine and didn't feel forced or coerced by manipulative writing. Nan's journey seemed genuine and therefore I felt genuine in relating to her magical journey.

Would this same story happen if I took off from home right now? I don't know, but in many ways, I feel like a part of me went on that journey of self discovery with her.

My book club discussed this book. The women under 40 (including me) hated it, found the main character vain, over-indulged and useless. The women over 40 all liked the book and understood the main character. The women over 50 said it was the story of their own lives.

Maybe it's a generational thing? I couldn't stand the main character. I couldn't understand why she allowed herself to get into the rut she was in, why she didn't do something sooner and why she didn't do something constructive instead of taking a roadtrip.

I wonder how everyone would respond if this story was about a man who decided one day that he was bored with his life and his wife and wanted to find some adventure. He then proceeds to write letters to his wife from the road in which he details his sexual exploits with women he meets on the road. ...