Glorie

Widowed after 50 years of marriage, Gloria (called Glorie) Carcieri finds herself caught between two worlds. Spending her nights at the home of her married daughter and days across the street at the house she shared with her husband, Jack, she drifts between fantasy and reality, between her memories of the past and her fears of the future. Her husband has been dead for seven years, but he's still her closest confidant, and their extended conversations make Jack a character as fully realized as any other in this quietly affecting book.

Glorie's link with the past is threatened when her mealy-mouthed son-in-law Patrick pressures her to sell her former home. The book's story line (such as it is) revolves around Glorie's struggle to thwart the sale, but the principal pleasures here have nothing to do with plot. Instead, we get the rich particulars of one life as it draws to a close. Glorie is a fully realized creation, an old lady who's most certainly not from the old-lady department of central casting--neither spunky nor sweet, but wholly herself.