Gelezen november 2007. Ik heb deze in het Engels gelezen (One True Thing), vandaar mijn reactie in het Engels:
Ellen Gulden is forced by her father to look after her mother after she has been diagnosed with cancer. From October till February she takes care of her mother in a very loving way. They install the Gulden Girls Book and Cook Club (with only the two of them as members). At first mother is able to do things, go out shopping or take a walk, but gradually the desease takes over. The wheelchair comes in the house, the number of painkillers increase, a nurse is coming over once in a while to check her out and at the age of 47 she looks a very old woman due to the chemotherapy.
Father George Gulden is a college professor in English literature and is mainly away. He leaves the caretaking of his wife to their daughter completely. But throughout the book you sense the love between the parents. And although it looks like the mother is the weaker person in the marriage, just doing everything to make her husband and children happy, at the end you know she is the only one that made home home. As Ellen describes on page 276: 'We'd made her simpler all her life, simpler than her real self. We'd made her what we needed her to be. We'd made her ours, our one true thing.'
Ellen changes from a hardworking, bitchy woman with ample empathy for other people, into a loving, caring person, culminating in a totally different careerchange.
After her mother dies, Ellen is arrested for murdering her mother with an overdose of morfine. But did she really? And if not, then who did?

What a beautiful book. I loved it from page 1 till the last. The struggle of Ellen, who takes care of her mother but at the end has to let her down, is very well described. And the twist in the last part of the book is unexpected.