The Hospice Singer Receives Kirkus Review
In Duberstein’s novel, a retired man’s encounter with a terminally ill young woman shakes up his boring life.
Ian Nelson, a straight-laced, 66-year-old retired guidance counselor, lives an uneventful life in a small New England town with his dog, Fred, and his disapproving wife, Polly, a psychotherapist. Besides visiting his curmudgeonly friend Jack Sutcliffe and occasional phone calls with his grown-and-flown son and daughter, Ian’s chief social activity is singing with the Angel Band, a local chorus that serenades people who are receiving hospice care. One December evening, they sing for an unusual client—a beautiful, young, and lonely woman named Anita whose vibrancy belies her diagnosis of an aggressive, fatal brain tumor. As Anita draws him into an ambiguous friendship, Ian soon finds himself breaking the group’s rules against involvement with clients and keeping secrets from Polly—despite his conviction that after nearly 40 years of marriage, she can read his mind. When his life is suddenly upended, Ian confronts and questions everything he has taken for granted about life, love, and mortality.
Duberstein’s prose, evocative without being flowery, abounds with spot-on psychological insights and wry social commentary, whether describing the dynamics of small-town gossip or the frustrations of booking travel online. The novel begins slowly, highlighting the tedium of Ian’s day-to-day existence, but the pace soon accelerates. Ian is initially a typical nice-guy hero in the well-trodden territory of the midlife-crisis novel, but he morphs into someone much more interesting. The novel explores themes like honesty and secrecy in relationships, how well we can really know others, aging, death, and happiness with a light touch that makes such timeless questions relevant and relatable.
An entertaining, reflective novel with layered characters.
