Injured Party

by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

In this, her seventh novel, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer has created a passionate and utterly absorbing portrait of a woman at that dangerous point of life, her early forties, when age is a high You have lived long enough to have perspective and feel regret, the sun begins to move past the meridian, the shadows now fall in front of you, and whatever you see is shaded with the weight of what came before.Having returned from the hospital, officially cured of a fever of unknown origin, Iris finds she has lost the thread of her life. Something happened in the hospital; she had gotten too close to death, had begun to cross over......."

Genres: Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Susan Fromberg Schaeffer was an American novelist and poet who was a Professor of English at Brooklyn College for more than thirty years. She won numerous national writing awards and contributed book reviews for the New York Times.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Fr...

Reviews

[Linda Branham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I coped this straight from the description of the book
"Iris returns home from the hospital, where she has been treated for a fever of unknown origin, unable to talk to her devoted husband or her two adolescent children, unable to leave her bed. Her self-absorbed bout of depression is interrupted by the arrival of John, the long-lost lover of her youth, who has decided to spend the last months of his life (he's terminally ill) with Iris and her family. Patient, tolerant husband Mike agrees with little protest, observing John's positive effect on Iris. The inner workings of the family-plus-stranger setup are wonderfully precise, and the psychological changes of middle age are rendered especially vivid in this complex heroine."

This is what the story is about... but it haunted me with it's intensity of feelings and relationships. Ms Schaeffer is so compelling in her ability to describe the depression, the confusion , the memories. It is a book that I have kept in my library

[Cws]

F Sch