Eliot and his wife Claire have been happily married for nearly four decades. They've raised two children in their sleepy Connecticut town and have weathered the inevitable ups and downs of a long life spent together. But eight years after Claire was diagnosed with cancer, the end is near, and it's time to gather loved ones and prepare for the inevitable. Over the years of Claire's illness, Eliot has willingly shifted into the role of caregiver, appreciating the intimacy and tenderness that comes with a role even more layered and complex than the one he performed as a devoted husband. But as he focuses on settling into what will be their last days and weeks together, Claire makes an unexpected request that leaves him reeling.
Slyly solemn and skillfully surprising ... Claire is never anything but convincingly drawn ... The story profits from having its point-of-view character in the dark, so to speak, rather than seeing everything through the mind of the existentially petulant Claire. We stay in the mystery of this couple, with its shades and shifts. And in the final pages, with their small, quiet turns, we have the readerly satisfaction of a good ending, that elusive and beckoning goal.
The polar opposite of a beach read, but that doesn’t mean it’s a total drag. Packer has a gift for depicting the undercurrents of emotion in moments when two people who have been together for decades ... It feels like Packer has a deep understanding of the complex emotions she portrays in Some Bright Nowhere. And like we’ve been given privileged access to a horrible situation we’d all like to keep confined to the pages of a book.
