Berg’s books focus on the perseverance of women
Talking recently with New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Berg was like having a conversation with my Aunt Mary in Colorado. Except that my aunt, a retired nurse, isn’t known outside her small community, and Berg has written 17 novels, nine best-sellers among them, including “Open House,” “Dream When You’re Feeling Blue” and “The Art of Mending.” She also has 1.5 million books in print and has appeared three times on Oprah’s popular TV talk show.
What makes the two women similar, however, is that they relate to the same topics: Food and family; love and relationships; aging and self-esteem; and responsibility and rebellion.
During our phone interview, Berg was in Boston just beginning her 12-city book tour promoting her latest collection of short stories, “The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: and Other Small Acts of Liberation.” She’ll be in Lincoln May 21 to discuss her book of short stories about women breaking free of conventions and living life to the fullest.
Before speaking with Berg I read “Dream When You’re Feeling Blue,”her 2007 novel about American women during World War II, and most of “The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted.” What struck me from the first pages was the fact that she is a strong, competent and compelling writer. After the first chapter in “Dream” entitled “April 1943” I began to understand what millions of mainly women readers already knew: Her characters are immediately and emotionally identifiable.
“Much of Elizabeth Berg’s appeal is that she creates people just like we are,” explained Linda Hillegass, owner of Lee Booksellers. “Her characters are people we can identify with.”
In “Dream” I was smitten from the start with independent-minded Kitty as well as her soldier-boyfriend Hank and less so with her sisters, Louise and Tish, and their beaux. What the period novel reminded me of was a sort of American Girl for adults story about 1940s America during the tumultuous war years.
Based in Chicago where Berg lives, the adventures of the Heaney girls, their brothers, parents and soldier-boyfriends offered a realistic and gripping portrait of what life for middle class, Midwesterners was like during the war. Like the American Girl series, the way of relating to the era is through the central character, in this case, Kitty.
Berg’s extensive research of life 65 years ago shines through in her spot-on descriptions of basic activities, such as V-mail letter writing, food rationing and USO dances. She completed much of her homework at the Chicago and Oak Park public libraries, but also acknowledges family members who assisted her with poignant details about K rations, hemlines, mascara, music and movies.
For my first experience reading Berg, I enjoyed the historic storyline with a final twist, and felt rewarded in learning about the grave burdens and sacrifices made by the women on the home front.
So with great anticipation I quickly started Berg’s latest work published April 15, her second story collection since “Ordinary Life” (2002). The stories in “The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: and Other Small Acts of Liberation” also focus on the perseverance and persistence of women caught in difficult, although usually humorous, predicaments. The contemporary stories reveal the daily lives of women mainly between the ages of 40-60 (perhaps reflecting her core readership) who make choices of allowance and denial in life and how they deal with the circumstances.
Choosing to write another collection of short stories couldn’t have come at a better time for Berg, who said she “loved writing this book.”
“I discovered I love short stories,” she said. “I’ve always been an economical writer, but this one was so much fun. It has humor and pathos, so it is serious at heart but laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.”
An apt description for the works of a popular writer who will certainly be as interested in exploring women’s issues in person as she is on the page.
Pamela S. Thompson is the editor of L Magazine and the Ultimate Home Delivery Sunday section.
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