"Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? What if you got it back?"
The book in a single line would be - A suicidal former baseball player is granted one more day with his dead mother.
It's a gripping story of a shattered family that's superbly written. Mingled with moments that wring the heart, it is in a fluid style where a broken Charles 'Chick' Benetto narrates the story of his life.
The book is about Chick's failure to build a a professional career and his even more serious failure with his family, job and finance. It's about his failure to discern what is right and what is wrong, failure in realising the most important people & things of his life. It's about his blind faith in his father that leads him to do so many irresponsible things like dropping out of college and lie to his mother. One day he leaves home for a game, he leaves her birthday party, without declaring the real reason of course...he shuts the car door as his mother speaks to him...that's the last he sees her alive. She dies as timely medical help is not available. And our Benetto lives in regret of all those times he didn't stand up for his mother.
The book starts with a shocking question about why he wanted to commit suicide. As he takes us along his life one cannot help but feel sorry for him. One can actually empathise with the kid for the shallow ambitions without any preparation.
As a father, as a husband, as an individual he manages to become a pathetic loser in all of these aspects. He plans his suicide and is not able to go about it the way he wanted. He meets with a road accident from where the story leads us to his meeting with his mother. And then he returns, loaded with the lessons from his mother that he got during the one day that he spends with her in his town.
The moments they spend together is very insightful and touching. This results in patching up the broken bond between the two. Their discussion about lives of different people they visit, the final moments of people known to them and finally their discussion about the one woman who would have drawn the utmost hatred....an amazing trip about people and relationships.
The mother. She towers above all the chaos. Incidents of times when the mother stood up for him...and times when he didn't stand up for her that dot the book are amazing. We take our parents for granted. Particularly the mother. But she comes out of it all much stronger than anyone else in this book. And gives him one more day in his life to realise what he had done with his life. And then, magically, he gets to live on...to correct his mistakes and earn back the faith and trust of his daughter. The revelation of the listener's identity in the end is a pleasant surprise and proves that he actually succeeds in getting his daughter back.
The transformation he undergoes after meeting his mother is nicely captured. After all, not every one gets to learn from one's mother after her death. It's one thing to remember what she stood for but it is another to live one full day again with her to learn from her and get a lot of issues clarified in person. The plot develops in a captivating way, capturing the different aspects of relationships beautifully.
A wonderful lesson that ends with a longing statement "I would like to make things right again with those I love".
Of course yes, we would all love to do just that, but have never found the time to do so.
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