Dream When You're Feeling Blue: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Elizabeth Berg (Author)
Key Phrases: Elizabeth Berg, Frank Heaney, Michael Junior (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
A Rita Hayworth look-alike and her sister keep the home fires burning for young men going off to fight WWII in Berg's nostalgic tale of wartime romance and family sacrifice. Hoping her boyfriend, Julian, will propose before shipping out to the Pacific, beautiful redhead Kitty Heaney discovers not only is she not engaged, but she's enlisted as the delivery person for her sister Louise's engagement ring from Michael, her boyfriend, who has departed for the European front. Distance makes Louise's and Michael's hearts grow fonder while Kitty discovers independence through her job at a bomber factory. As the months go by, Louise learns she is pregnant and Kitty meets an attractive soldier (one of many the girls encounter) at a USO dance. As the young soldiers offer a range of feelings about war from humor to anger, wonder to despair, Berg (We Are All Welcome Here; The Handmaid and the Carpenter; 2000 Oprah pick Open House) captures changing attitudes toward working women and single mothers in this sentimental celebration of a bygone era. (May)
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From Booklist
The best-selling, prolific Berg has reimagined the biblical story of Mary and Joseph in Nazareth in he Handmaid and the Carpenter (2006) and re-created the turbulent civil rights drama of 1960s Mississippi in We Are All Welcome Here (2005). She sets her latest in Chicago during World War II, featuring three Irish Catholic sisters--Kitty, Louise, and Tish Heaney. The novel opens as Kitty and Louise say good-bye to their boyfriends at Union Station as they head off to war. Over the next three years, the sisters--amid the usual sibling squabbles over borrowed clothes and makeup--learn what it means to sacrifice during wartime. Kitty takes on an exhausting job at Douglas Aircraft; Louise, deeply in love with her boyfriend, keeps her worries to herself while writing him upbeat letters full of the news of home; and Trish spends her weekends at USO dances, promising to write to every soldier she meets. Berg makes the most of her Chicago setting, working in references to iconic institutions such as the old Marshall Field's department store and the Palmer House hotel. She also deftly mixes up the tone, moving easily between the wry dialogue of the long-married Heaney parents and the sad and affecting letters from the soldiers at the front. Although a final plot twist may not be fully credible, it does little to detract from this affectionate tribute to the patriotic 1940s and the women of the Greatest Generation. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400065100
• ISBN-13: 978-1400065103
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (120 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #411,376 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite Berg books, May 13, 2007

By	Karen E. Fauls-traynor "karenft" (Chittenango, New York USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am surprised to read some of the other reviews of this book, because I found this to be one of Berg's best. As a child of the 60's, most of what I know of WW2 is from a historical perspective. Berg made the second World War come to life for me, and put it in human perspective. It was sobering to realize that the worry about the soldiers in Iraq now is not so much different from how people worried about the soldiers back then. Will we never learn? I've read other novels of WW2, but found it refreshing how Berg allowed the character of Kitty to grow and develop questions about the patriotism of the day.

Coming from an Irish family, the accounts of daily life with the Heaney's struck a chord with me.

49 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars bitter disappointment, May 18, 2007

By	A. Vernick - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Oh, I hoped this would be good. I expected it to be good; at her best, Berg is such a great writer. And I have to say that I wonder whether this book would have been published if it had been submitted to an editor by an unknown.

I appreciate when authors do research for their books, but the trick is to use it wisely, to not overpower the reader by showing off all you know. The whole time I read I was thinking, Yes, we know you did your research. It was period-detail-drenched.

Which would have been forgivable if I had fallen in love with the characters. I kept waiting to. Expecting to. And I never did. When Berg's at her best, you can see inside the souls of her characters. In DREAM WHEN YOU'RE FEELING BLUE, I felt like she gave a shallow portrayal that was only rich in period details.

And it must be said; it had the most wholly unsatisfying and unbelievable ending I've come across in a long, long time.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rushed and Unsatisfying Ending, June 24, 2007

By	Loves Books (Maryland USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

After a book rich with details and and a story evolving slowly, the ending came in a rush with so many unanswered questions. With her usual style and skill, Elizabeth Berg draws well defined characters that you can almost picture in your mind like an old movie. With an ability to capture the essence of every day life unlike any other, she enables you to live along with the characters.

Perhaps as another reviewer suggested, the author will write a sequel to fill in the gaps from the end of the WW2 period to the conclusion of the book that will provide the detail that we all crave. A book written from the vantage point of each of the other sisters - Louise and Tish - or even the mother, Margaret (who was strong and interesting in the glimpse we got of her)- would be possible without being overly redundant.

Much as I enjoyed the book, I was disappointed in the ending because it cheated us of the same level of detail that the rest of the book provided. It was like buying a candy bar, eating half and finding the second half was cardboard. Yup, we got a dramatic conclusion, but it landed with a thunk.

More story, please.