Women on the Verge: A Reading from Three Novels

In Gayle Forman‘s Leave Me, a harried working mother who’s so busy taking care of her husband and twins, she doesn’t even realize she’s had a heart attack, packs a bag and leaves. Sisters suffer a tragedy that splinters their relationship, but when painful secrets from the past begin to surface, they must confront the issues that divide them, and come to terms with their own choices in Emily Giffin’s First Comes Love: A Novel. In Maria Semple’s novel, Today Will be Different, a woman finds all of her plans for the day interrupted by life, and then an encounter with a former colleague produces a graphic memoir with a dramatic tale that threatens to expose a family secret.