“The Story of Arthur Truluv” by Elizabeth Berg

Eighty-year old Arthur has lunch beside his wife’s grave everyday. He eats his sandwich as he talks to her in the achingly familiar way of long time partners and then goes home alone, where he’s settled into a routine that brings him safety but little satisfaction.

Till he meets Maddy, a high-school girl hanging around the cemetery, avoiding classes, struggling with self worth and the angst of a teenager whose background is less than stable. Maddy thinks Arthur is sweet, and she gives him the last name “Truluv”.

Arthur’s neighbor, Lucille, is close to Arthur’s age and recovering from a recent emotional blow, which she deals with by baking elaborate concoctions. She and Maddy and Arthur get to know each other, and  and when they find out Maddy’s condition (no spoiler here), they form a mishmash of a family. THE STORY OF ARTHUR TRULUV is the story of decent, flawed humans doing their best to take care of each other.

Arthur is a wonderful character. He is, as Maddy says, very sweet, but he’s not saccharine. He’s real, and so is Maddy, her tough exterior masking her tender interior, her yearning for connection a driving force in her relationships. I love the way Lucille is depicted too—a good, solid woman with a longing for love and little tolerance for frivolity. “Well,” she says, when Maddy and Arthur describe a beautiful scene from their walk that day, “Aren’t you just the Nature Channel?”

I’m a sucker for stories about oddball families formed in unlikely ways. Kent Haruf depicts them beautifully, and so does Barbara Kingsolver. And, I’m happy to say after lapping up every word of THE STORY OF ARTHUR TRULUV, so does Elizabeth Berg. I’d have liked an ending that was a tad meatier, but other than that, I loved this book. It bolstered my faith in the human spirit. May we all be more like Arthur Truluv.

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