One True Thing: A Novel

By Anna Quindlen

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “hypnotically interesting” (The Washington Post Book World) novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Miller’s Valley

“[Anna Quindlen] writes passionately . . . painstakingly uncovering all the intensity, suspicion and primitive love that bonds mothers and daughters.”—The Boston Globe

Ellen Gulden is enjoying her career as a successful magazine writer in New York City when she learns that her mother, Kate, is dying of cancer. Ellen’s father insists that she quit her job and return home to become a caregiver. A high-powered career woman, Ellen has never felt she had much in common with her mother, a homemaker and the heart of their family. Yet as Ellen begins to spend time with Kate, she discovers many surprising truths, not only about herself, but also about the woman she thought she knew so well.
 
Later, when Ellen is accused of the mercy killing of her mother, she must not only defend her own life but make a difficult choice—either accept responsibility for an act she did not commit or divulge the name of the person she believes committed a painful act of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780307763518

Anna Quindlen

Anna Marie Quindlen is an author, journalist, and opinion columnist. Her New York Times column, Public and Private, won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992.

Reviews for One True Thing

[smallwonder56_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have this thing about very popular books--I tend to avoid what everybody else is raving about. Sometimes I'm utterly wrong.I should have read and appreciated One True Thing years ago. Anna Quinlen is adept at conveying the truth about ambivalence, even with people you love the most dearly. In this story, I found all the ambivalence I felt about taking care of my own mother as she was aging and dying. She tells the truth. Quinlen's writing is superb, her characters have depth and are interesting people. There's everything in there about how, even when you love your parent, you want to have your own life, too. Wonderful book. I'll be going on an Anna Quindlen binge soon.

[qofd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found this book less an emotional and more a factual retelling of dealing with cancer and it was a touching read because of it. You could see that this is how it would really be. Now that I know that Quindlen went through this herself with her own mother I can understand why.

[dandiercks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I’m probably one of the few males to review this book if the names on the Amazon reviews are true reflections of the gender of the writers. And it stands to reason that many people would consider this book a book that appeals to women rather than men. After tall, the two main characters are women. The focus of the story is the mother/daughter relationship. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, mainly because, as I’ve said in other Anna Quindlen book reviews, she could write down the alphabet and I would read and enjoy it. My first introduction to Quindlen was as a journalist many years ago. I taught high school English for 40 years, and for many of those years, I taught Quindlen’s Newsweek magazine column “The Quilt of a Country,” a beautiful essay she wrote a week after the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. She is a wonderful writer with much to say, whether it’s in the back of a weekly news magazine or in a 300-page novel. So I’ll be glad to be counted among the majority audience for “One True Thing” even though I’m probably in the minority.

[riofriotex · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the prologue, 24-year-old Ellen Gulden is in jail, accused of giving her dying mother an overdose of morphine. Part One of the book are the events leading up to that situation. Ellen, who is a journalist in New York City, is back for a visit at the end of the summer in the small college town where she grew up and where her father, George, is a professor. Her 46-year-old mother, Kate, is diagnosed with cancer, and George, who Ellen practically worships, insists that Ellen move back home to care for her.This is the strongest part of the book, showing Ellen's growing respect, admiration, and love for the homemaker mother she used to dismiss and take for granted, and her correspondingly increasing disgust for her father, who continues to envelop himself with work and sexual encounters while his wife is dying. Ellen and her mother start the "Gulden Girls Book and Cook Club," reading and discussing classics, while Ellen learns cook and participates in her mother's community Christmas activities. Kate's pain and disability increase, and Part One ends with her death in February of the following year.Part Two is the aftermath, Ellen's arrest and the appearance before the grand jury. I won't spoil the end of the book, as it really doesn't matter. The story's strength is in the mother-daughter relationship. Quindlen took time off from college to nurse her own mother through her death from ovarian cancer at age 40, when Quindlen was 19.

[faradaydon_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Simply brilliant!

[rainpebble_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One True Thing by Anna Quindlen; (4*)One True Thing is the perfect book for a quiet winter day, a cozy chair and a cup of hot chocolate or tea. Quindlen's writing is both lyrical and stark, showing her keen observations about how we relate with and by those we love.Ellen, who lives and works in New York has basically been summoned home by her father to care for her mother who is dying of cancer. Her father and her two brothers are to carry on with their lives at school and at work. Ellen is angered by this. She does not want to give up her life, work and apartment in the city. But she does what is expected of her, moves home and helps her mother and father. At first her mother is still able to get around but needs to be driven to her chemo treatments and needs help with the housework. She can enjoy her life and she is happy spending these days with her daughter and the two of them getting to know one another better. She decides she wants to do a book group with her daughter. They go the the bookstore and choose three novels to read and discuss. They get two copies each of: Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations. They make it through P and P and most of the way through Anna Karenina before her mother gets to ill to continue.Ellen's mother is beginning to have a lot of pain by now, especially in her back. Her oncologist is very hands on with her treatment and even comes to the house when Ellen calls for help. She is now receiving morphine in tablet/capsule form and through a port in her chest through which she can dose herself just by pressing a little button. This manages her pain much better for a time.Ellen spends tender moments with her mother throughout this time. Her brothers come home and realize their mother will never be well again and they return to the city and to school in great emotional pain, grieving already. Their father spends the nights with his wife and Ellen often sees them together with her father pulling a chair up to the hospital bed and hears them murmuring quietly with each other.When her mother dies, for some unspecified reason, they do an autopsy. (This did not ring true to me. I have never known of an autopsy being done on someone who has died of cancer.) At any rate after the funeral the doctor speaks of this to Ellen and lets her know that lethal amounts of morphine were found in her mother's body and that she is a suspect.What follows is the meat of the story, other than the relationships within the family.I recommend One True Thing for Anna Quindlen's beautiful writing style and for the way she confronts her reader's worst fears. The judicial aspects of the book's ending were distracting and more unlikely than not. But I found this to be a good read.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ellen Gulden is a 23-year-old up-and-coming magazine writer living in New York City, when her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer. On a visit home her father tells her that she simply must leave her job and return to help her mother. Kate has always been the quintessential homemaker – excelling at cooking, decorating, sewing, stenciling, needlepoint – every craft and skill to make her house a loving and welcoming home. Ellen has been more like her father – driven and ambitious, given to literary analysis and harsh judgment – but as she spends times with her mother and begins to recognize the hard work and dedication required to be the homemaker Kate is, Ellen arrives at some different conclusions about who she is, who her parents are, and their relationships to one another.

This is a thought-provoking read for several reasons. On the surface it deals with death and dying and the way in which our society treats the terminally ill. When the book opens, Ellen is in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her mother. So the reader immediately knows what the pivotal event will be. Ellen then begins to recall the previous months.

The book then begins to deals with the complicated relationships between adult children and their parents. Ellen is a young woman who has always sought her father’s approval, and diminished the contributions of her mother. Living with them again as an adult, in a difficult and trying situation, she slowly awakens to the truth about herself, her parents and siblings. She develops a much closer relationship with her mother, even though she still resents having to be her caregiver. At the end I always did what she asked, even though I hated it … I tried to do it all without screaming, without shouting, “I am dying with you.”

Ellen comes to recognize the value of true friendship, and how she has held people at bay (and why). She learns that she must forgive – her father, her mother, the townspeople, and, most importantly, herself.

I found this a very compelling read. I was interested and engaged from beginning to end. That being said, there are some scenes which are difficult to read, because Quindlen is brutally honest about what it means to be a caregiver to a terminally ill loved one. Several scenes reminded me of my own efforts to help my mother when she was still at home; her Alzheimer’s having progressed to where she needed constant attention to ensure her safety. Kate’s behavior mirrored my own mother’s resistance to being helped – because she did NOT want to be thought helpless. She had always been the caregiver, she did not want to be the one being cared for.

[auntieclio · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One True Thing could have easily been maudlin and sentimental, but it wasn't. The story of Ellen Gulden finding herself through the crucible of caring for her mother with terminal cancer, dealing with the emotionally unavailable father she once adored, and being accused of giving her mother a killing dose of morphine was emotional, yet tenderly written. For me the books' main theme was about thinking one knows one true thing and then finding out that thing isn't true at all. Very thought provoking.

[thejeanette · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the best, the most carefully written, of all Quindlen's books I've read so far.

[formerenglishteacher · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I’m probably one of the few males to review this book if the names on the Amazon reviews are true reflections of the gender of the writers. And it stands to reason that many people would consider this book a book that appeals to women rather than men. After tall, the two main characters are women. The focus of the story is the mother/daughter relationship. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, mainly because, as I’ve said in other Anna Quindlen book reviews, she could write down the alphabet and I would read and enjoy it. My first introduction to Quindlen was as a journalist many years ago. I taught high school English for 40 years, and for many of those years, I taught Quindlen’s Newsweek magazine column “The Quilt of a Country,” a beautiful essay she wrote a week after the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. She is a wonderful writer with much to say, whether it’s in the back of a weekly news magazine or in a 300-page novel. So I’ll be glad to be counted among the majority audience for “One True Thing” even though I’m probably in the minority.

[moonshineandrosefire · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have to say that I had started watching the 1998 movie that came on television the other night when Mareena reminded me that I had the book hidden somewhere around the house. I decided to dig it out and read it because I love sad books. When a homemaker mother gets cancer, her daughter quits her top dog job to take care of her. The husband is a college professor who is remote and leaves the care of his wife to his daughter.I enjoyed this book; it was well-written and an easy read. It was very interesting as I love books about the dynamics of families. I give it an A+!

[teresa1953_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ellie Gulden had a fairly normal life. The very gifted and successful daughter of an English professor and a dutiful housewife, she and her two brothers wanted for very little, other than more attention from their constantly occupied father and always busy mother. Their home is a welcoming place filled with their mother Kate’s craftwork and the smells of her wonderful cooking and baking.As a stark contrast we are introduced to Ellie as she is in jail, accused of killing her mother who had terminal cancer.When Kate was diagnosed, and it became clear that she did not have long to live, Ellie’s father George requests that she leave her successful career in the city, her flat and her boyfriend to move herself back home to care for her mother. It is delivered as a “fait accompli” and leaves Ellie with little choice, even though she has never had a great relationship with her mother. She wonders how she will cope.However, during the next five months, Ellie and Kate form a relationship they never thought possible. The pair start a two woman club called the Gulden Girls’ Book and Cook Club and rediscover old classic books which enable Kate to tell Ellie the things she never told her growing up. The charismatic George, on the other hand, seems to do everything he can to avoid helping his wife, believing that this should be done by a woman. Ellie struggles to understand why he is so distant and believes him to have been frequently unfaithful to his wife. As if Kate did not know?As Kate’s health worsens, so Ellie becomes closer to her and when the end does come, Ellie suspects that George has overdosed her mother’s morphine. But it is Ellie who is arrested and we are left in disbelief as she “covers” for her father. This novel is profoundly sad and uncompromising. It deals with illness and death, love and loss in devastating detail. I found it compelling and deeply emotional. It is a story I will not forget easily.“Death is so strange, so mysterious, so sad, that we want to blame someone for it. And it was easy to blame me.”This book was made available to me, prior to publication, for an honest review.

[jepeters333 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Daughter takes care of her dying mother.

[cestovatela · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A better book than I imagined it would be. A distant daughter returns home to care for the mother she's always secretly judged herself superior too. In the process, she discovers that the life of a stay-at-home mom is more complex and demanding than it first appears. Potentially trite subject matter is handled in a thoughtful way.

[dee_kohler_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Finally got up the nerve to read this. A lovely book after all.

[amanaceerdh · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

read with a box of tissues

[dawnlovesbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

read with a box of tissues