Evening, by Susan Minot, 1996 * * *

During a 3-day summer weekend on the coast of Maine, where she attended the wedding of her best friend, Ann Grant fell in love. Forty years later — after three marriages and five children — Ann Lord is a patient on the verge of death. Family and friends take vigil at her bedside, and through the haze and confusion of Ann's heavily sedated mind, there are ramblings about unconnected things, which pass in an instant and then quickly dissolve. Only one thing remains sharp in Ann's mind, the man she met during that weekend, a man with whom she fell in love. In the surge of hope and possibility that coursed through her at twenty-five, Ann discovers the highest point of her life. Evening is an exploration of time and memory, of love's transcendence and of its failure to transcend. As she careens between lucidity and delirium,  the writing creates an authentic “other world”,  where consciousness slips between reality and dreams. The writing is choppy at times and confusing at others, but a vivid portrait of the final portions of a person’s life and of the memories that are never forgotten is portrayed. This is a book for anyone who remembers the passions of their youth and the wonder of a first love.