Book Review: The End of an Error by Mameve Medwed

Looking back at the pivotal moments in our lives, it's hard not to wonder what might have happened if we'd taken a different fork in the road.  In her new book, The End of an Error, Mameve Medwed takes up this question.  As a teenager, Lee Emery takes a trip to London with her extravagant and delightful grandmother and falls in love with a tender English boy.   The interlude was brief and unconsummated, but the two pledge eternal love.  The attraction appears to be one of love at first sight, because the development of these deep feelings occurs in an astonishingly short period of time.  Perhaps that reflects the character of adolescent love which often appears not to be based on anything solid.  That's what Lee tells herself when she looses both her parents in a tragic accident and throws herself into wedded bliss with kind, steady-as-a-rock Ben.  But throughout her life, Lee can't help but wonder if she'd made a mistake.

As Lee struggles with the nature of her love for Simon, Medwed raises the idea that love takes many different forms.  Lee, living a safe comfortable life in Maine, loves her flamboyant grandmother who works New York like an aging debutante.  Though there is much about her grandmother that Lee doesn't understand, the love she feels for her, in a sense, sets the standard for comparison of every other love of her life.  Lee loves her husband but still can't shake the feeling that it's not the kind of love she might have had with Simon.  She tries so very hard to find something wrong with him but can't.  So, when the opportunity arises to see Simon again, Lee jumps at the chance to sort out the nature of her love for him once and for all.

Medwed artfully constructs Lee's world as a place where things aren't that bad, but aren't all that good, either.  She examines love as both ephemeral and enduring.  Medwed's writing is lively and colorful and her wit is intelligent and wry.   She wraps up the Lee's story in a brave and refreshing way.  It's the perfect book to add to your summer reading list.