Talk Before Sleep

What do women talk about when they know they don't have forever? They talk about what they have always talked about, only they go deeper and more honest: with outrageous humor they try to mitigate pain. Intimate and uncensored sharing, the kind of connection women prize, is at the heart of this deeply moving novel about the grit and power of female friends.

Ann and Ruth have always talked as only great friends can--honestly, and about everything: husbands and marriages, sex lives and children, their work, their hopes, their disappointments, and their dreams. For Ann, cautious and conventional, her closeness to the outspoken and eccentric Ruth brings about discovery and liberation, a chance to say whatever she wants, and, most important, under the insistent tutelage of Ruth, to become herself. Over the years, the women have shared recipes, quilting patterns, child care, delicate and dangerous secrets. Each rests secure in the knowledge that they will be friends forever. Then something happens that will change their lives forever, and the women begin to share something more profound than either of them might have predicted.

Written with an unerring ear for how women talk, laugh, and cry together, and with a gift for capturing the uniqueness of personality, Talk Before Sleep is sure to find a place in readers' hearts.

Elizabeth Berg’s novels Open House, The Pull of the Moon, Range of Motion, What We

Keep, Never Change, and Until the Real Thing Comes Along were bestsellers. Durable

Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year. Talk Before Sleep was

an ABBY finalist and a New York Times bestseller. In 1997, Berg won the NEBA Award in fiction,

and in 2000 her novel Open House was named an Oprah’s Book Club selection. She lives in

Chicago.