Betsy Lerner (The Forest for the Trees; Food and Loathing) recounts the story of her life and her mother's life--and their complicated, often contentious relationship--through bridge, an intricate card game that takes skill and practice to master. After Lerner's octogenarian mother Roz has surgery, Lerner stays with her to help out, and decides to investigate the game that has served as Roz's sustaining, lifelong constant. Enrolling in lessons and attending Roz's weekly bridge club, Lerner finally discovers a common ground to understand better her emotionally self-contained mother.
Snarky acuity and sensitivity layer the bittersweet narrative. Lerner explores the unspoken, painful recesses of Roz's life and the unsung lives of five Jewish women--children of the Depression, pre-feminist--who have met weekly in New Haven, Conn., to share lunch and play bridge for 50 years. Lerner believes bridge was the entertaining "HBO of its day." She shares details about the club and the ladies--collectively and individually--recounting their hopes and hardships and how they've faced life with proud, stoic self-reliance rare to women of Lerner's self-actualized generation, who put career and personal fulfillment over marriage and children. Lerner's own mother--a Brooklyn-born Socialist--is "darker, moodier and harder to know" than the rest of the Bridge Ladies. But as Lerner becomes more astute in game play, bridge becomes a deeper metaphor for crossing the rugged gulf between mother and daughter, who come to appreciate each other and how they've played the hands life has dealt them on their own terms. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines