On A Night Like This
Ellen Sussman
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Warner Books
ISBN: 0446531413

A single mother learns to confront loss so she may find love.

I wasn't at all sure I was going to like On A Night Like This. I'm not fond of soppy, sappy love stories, however, Ellen Sussman has written something else entirely.

Yes, it's about a high school “golden boy” who had everything, & the “hippie-chick” outsider who didn't.
Yes, it's about getting together for a ten year reunion & “My, haven't we all changed!”
Yes, it's about the cost of love, the failure of marriages & how empty everyone's lives are ... except it's much, much more than that!

Ellen Sussman has a fine way with a tale, with a plausible, emotional story about two people who hardly knew each other way back then, who now, when they meet, find comfort & enjoyment in each other.

Except Luke is coming out of retreat from his cabin in the hills of northern California after his decade long marriage fizzled out from years of hollowness, & Blair has just come out of her doctor's office after receiving her death sentence, worrying about how she will tell, Amanda, her beloved teenage daughter.

Luke, a writer with an award-winning screenplay to a movie everyone has seen, goes in search of the girl whose story inspired him, ostensibly to invite her to the school reunion. What he finds is a woman in need, & a reason to keep on living.

Blair, a free spirited single mom, & chef at a local San Francisco restaurant, is struggling to come to grips with the last months of her life. When the golden boy finds her, she must revisit her past, & accept the opporutnity for some hope.

When the two meet the spirit of On A Night Like This crackles & sizzles, turning up the heat on memories, betrayals, angers, sorrows &, ultimately finding out what love truly is.

A lovely, heartwarming, useful story which leaves you wondering: “How would I like to be, & where, at the end of my life?”
(02/01/04)

Rebecca