I know you wrote that you loved this book, I did not. It fell so far short of my expectations. It is of course beautifully written. She is a graceful and fairly descriptive writer. But this was called a memoir of a friendship and i saw very little of that in the book. It was all about her, a little bit about their friendship, and almost not at all about Caroline Knapp. I barely got a sense of their friendship apart from their walking their dogs and rowing. And I could not get over how self-absorbed the author was. Wow, I was really disappointed. I wanted to love this book, I wanted to cry, I wanted to rail against the universe for the loss and grief that people so intimately connected endure when they lose each other. But I wasn't allowed to care. I found myself wishing badly to know what Caroline was like. I think I would have liked her. But I do not think I would like Gail. Elizabeth Berg wrote a much more devastating, honest, complex story of a friendship and a death in her NOVEL Talk Before Sleep. Now that was a heartbreaker.