Three Legs in the Evening: A Novel
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley June 6, 2023
Author Bette Ann Moskowitz
Distributor: Roundfire Books
ISBN: 978-1803412061
Publisher: John Hunt Publications
Release Date: May 2023
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Funny, quirky and all too true to life, this delightful look at growing older from Bette Anne Moskowitz is definitely well worth the read, especially if you are growing older, and even if you are not!
There are three distinct sections to Three Legs in the Evening, naturally you could say a beginning a middle and an end but that is a bit clinical, although that is exactly what it is, the three stages of maturing, once you reach a certain age, but not exactly like a fine wine.
Sally is at her long-time friend Susie’s funeral; it is a hot day, she is dressed to the max in a sharp red dress, high heels and has a hanky pinned to her hair. She is beginning to wonder why she wore a red wool dress when a grieving relative ‘accidentally’ knocks her into Susie’s grave, where she landed on top of the coffin, breaking her ankle!
Having made the decision to retire she sells up her greeting card business, and as the days pass she grieves for her friend Suzie, her husband who passed several years before from Cancer and for her former life. Mindlessly watching the television, at first she thinks the terrible events of the Bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York was just fiction, but once she realises it is fact, she like many others becomes obsessed with the event.
She finds this very unsettling, more than normal, which coincides with other events in her children’s lives and the possible advent of new man, or men in her life, a huge worry about a red car that appears to be abandoned, which in her mind, as she linked it to the World Trade Centre bombing, is disconcerting.
As each incident unfolds, she begins at times to question what is right and what is not; is she over reacting, should she be enjoying a new ‘love affair’ even though she has been widowed for some time. Many seemingly small aspects of her life in general appear to be far more problematic than before and reality is what she wants to make of it, at any given time.
Bette Anne Moskowitz has delicately created a gentle pathway into the issue of the mental health that often comes with growing older. She has used wisdom, humour and a lovable character in Sally, who it is very easily able to relate to, who could be your mother, grandmother or yourself.
Three Legs in the Evening is a must read for anyone who is perhaps approaching a certain age and really understands the many idiosyncrasies of growing older, with a certain flair and pizazz.