Evenings at Five: A Novel and Five New Stories (Ballantine Reader's Circle) - Softcover

"With deep truth and immediacy, Gail Godwin illuminates an indivisible marriage--its experience, passion, thought, and wit; and its sundering into loss, longing, and remembrance. For such closeness, there should be a word beyond love."
--SHIRLEY HAZZARD

"With words alone, Gail Godwin has created an important piece of music about a love which death can only increase and deepen. Yes, and Frances Halsband's illustrations are a haunting countermelody."
--KURT VONNEGUT

"Evenings at Five reads like a novel, but it's a fictionalization of a real event. Gail Godwin uses all the weapons of art to deal with her own all-too-real grief, and the result is a rigorous exercise in restraint, control, irony, memory."
--The Washington Post Book World

"A LITTLE MASTERPIECE . . .
DEXTEROUS, STRONGLY FELT, MULTI-LEVEL WRITING."
--Asheville Citizen-Times

"[A] heartrending book . . . Brilliantly webbed scenes fill its pages . . . Godwin writes with enormous clarity and unvarnished prose. She writes, in other words, not to approach the truth but to forcefully ascertain it."
--Book magazine

"Possibly her truest book . . . There is a quiet dignity here that pulls you into the two people's lives. . . . Full of wicked humor and sage and subtle advice, laced with achingly familiar refrains of love and loss, Evenings at Five could well restore a bereaved man's or woman's sense of self."
--The Roanoke Times

"An exquisite portrait of a thirty-year relationship . . . There is a depth and intensity within that many large tomes never capture. . . . Just as Christina ultimately knows she has to move on, one assumes Godwin needed to write Evenings at Five to move on and work on another outstanding novel."
--South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"QUIRKY, WRY, AND SURPRISINGLY POWERFUL . . .
with a delight in words and the ways people use and abuse them that is typical of this urbane author."
--Publishers Weekly

"If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest . . . she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death."
--NED ROREM

"The New York Times bestselling author of Evensong has scored again. . . . The novel, which can be read in one sitting, is an excellent showcase of Godwin's talent. Those not already Godwin fans are apt to be converted."
--The Sunday Oklahoman

"Gail Godwin has written a book about the heaviest matters of loss, grief, and loneliness with a touch so light that I was as often deeply amused by it as I was deeply moved."
--FREDERICK BUECHNER

"The most balanced heart-rending book you ever read on the nature of loss, loneliness, and grief."
--Desert News

"INTIMATE AND TOUCHING."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A fierce evocation of what--at some time or another--everyone is bound to endure. . . . An amazing little volume that contains an explosive emotional wallop."
--ROBB FORMAN DEW

"An unflinching account of love, loss, grief, and the struggle toward consolation. It should touch every reader with its emotional power."
--ELIZABETH SPENCER

"No one does the nitty-gritty of soul-searching like Gail Godwin. . . . [She] is one of the few contemporary novelists willing to tackle the ticklish (to modern writers) topic of religion in real life. In a novel inspired by her own experience, she does it again, beautifully."
--BookPage

"Godwin accomplishes more in this smart, arch, and charming little illustrated novel than many of her peers do in far heftier volumes."
--Booklist

Seven months after the unexpected death of her husband, Rudy, Christina reflects on their nearly thirty years of life together, the vital bond between them, and her grief, from the perspective of their long-time ritual of getting together every evening at five o'clock to share drinks and their mutual love of language and music. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.