Review: Great summer read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 24, 2013
From the moment I began reading After Ten, I felt at home with the four women meeting the night before their ten-year law school reunion. As Beth sits waiting for the other three to show up, I'm wondering how the other women fared even though I don't know any of their stories. Because of Beth's anxiety at the meeting, I know the stories will be universal ones shared by my friends and me.After Ten is my kind of women's literature, and the telling and revealing of each woman's story did not disappointment me in the least. Shriver creates a history of the four lawyers that is unique. Its the emotions evoked by their experiences that makes it universal. Beth, Jordan, Sarah, and Tracey are all successful, at least as deemed by the outside world, if not by their families. But each carries scars of the friendships that formed in the first year of law school. Those scars went deep enough that the women lost track of each other and their friendships. They've managed to keep up through the alumni newsletter on a superficial and artificially devised tidbits.Shriver slowly reveals the stories taking the reader from the promise made to return ten years after graduation to their favorite college hangout the night before the reunion. All four managed to keep their promise to one another, and Tracey brings evidence of that night in the form of a cocktail napkin where she wrote the aspirations for each of the four. As the napkin reveals their hopes and dreams, reality converges to allow the women to share secrets that reveal not all is as perfect as the periodic newsletters profess.I so liked the book, I've already downloaded Shriver's book Sixth South that focuses on one of the secondary characters from After Ten. If you like strong female characters with compelling stories, then you'll enjoy reading this book. I highly recommend it for your summer reading enjoyment.