A fifty-year-old Bridge game provides an unexpected way to cross the generational divide between a daughter and her mother. Betsy Lerner takes us on a powerfully personal literary journey, where we learn a little about Bridge and a lot about life.After a lifetime defining herself in contrast to her mother’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” generation, Lerner finds herself back in her childhood home, not … home, not five miles from the mother she spent decades avoiding. When Roz needs help after surgery, it falls to Betsy to take care of her. She expected a week of tense civility; what she got instead were the Bridge Ladies. Impressed by their loyalty, she saw something her generation lacked. Facebook was great, but it wouldn’t deliver a pot roast.
Tentatively at first, Betsy becomes a regular at her mother’s Monday Bridge club. Through her friendships with the ladies, she is finally able to face years of misunderstandings and family tragedy, the Bridge table becoming the common ground she and Roz never had.
By turns darkly funny and deeply moving, The Bridge Ladies is the unforgettable story of a hard-won—but never-too-late—bond between mother and daughter.
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Loved it. A mother helps her daughter learn to play bridge, and even lets her join her group from time to time, thereby closing the gen gap, or at least understanding there is a gap, and coming to terms with each other.
A friend from my growing up years recommended it because it reminded her of my mother. She was right. My mother was one of those ladies. Right on.
Memoir of a daughter of a mother who maintained friendships with her bridge playing companions. Author spent way too much time teaching the reader about how to play bridge…skipped over those parts.
Pretty boring actually.
A great story about real women all around us, friendships and life experiences. Enjoyable and easy to read.
The Bridge Ladies was a great study of mothers and daughter, and also generation gaps in many ways, I totally loved the book.
I play bridge and love the interaction between the generations
The Bridge Ladies, while fun to read and often unpredictable, is truly a sociological study of the times. As the author explores the differences between her mother’s
days and those of her mother’s friends (bridge friends), one can glimpse the changes from their day to hers. Some of the women friends of her mother have
succeeded in making the changes necessary to be comfortable in today’s world,
while others are still trying to adjust or are clinging to the past and baring able to
exist in today’s world. Always interesting, I found it quite revealing and interesting.
Betsy Lerner is a gifted writer and her memoir is very heartfelt and open. She examines her complicated (aren’t they all?) relationship with her mother as she gets to know her mother’s bridge group and learns to play bridge herself. As a mother, daughter, bridge player and lapsed Jew, this book spoke to me on many levels. A very worthwhile read!
did not read the whole book. It was tiresome and seemed whiney to me. did not want to waste my time on it.
Mother/daughter relationship building surrounded by 4 women that played Bridge once a week for 50 years. I am the age of the daughter and feel the mother/daughter relationship to be totally realistic. Would recommend as a good read.
For those of us Bridge ladies “of a certain age” this was a delightful glimpse of what our daughters might think of us, of the game of Bridge, and the enduring friendships forged at the Bridge table over a lifetime.