Review: Cheap Cabernet

Title: Cheap Caber­net

Author: Cathie Beck

Pub­lisher: Hype­r­ion Books

Date (to be) Pub­lished: July 2010

Syn­op­sis: (from Ama­zon)

I didn’t know that peo­ple come into our lives, and some­times, if we’re ter­ri­bly lucky, we get the chance to love them, that some­times they stay, that some­times you can, truly, depend on them.

Cathie Beck was in her late thir­ties and finally able to exhale after a life­time of just try­ing to get by. A teenage mother har­bor­ing vivid mem­o­ries of her own hard­scrab­ble child­hood, Cathie had spent years doing what­ever it took to give her chil­dren the stability–or at least the illu­sion of it–that she’d never had. More than that, through sheer will and deter­mi­na­tion, she had edu­cated them and her­self too. With her kids in col­lege, Cathie was at last ready to have some fun. The only prob­lem was that she had no idea how to do it and no friends to do it with. So she put an ad in the paper for a made-​​up women’s group: WOW … Women on the Way. Eight women showed up that first night, and out of that group a friend­ship formed, one of those mete­oric, pas­sion­ate, stand-​​by-​​you friend­ships that come around once in a life­time and change you for­ever … if you’re lucky.

Where Did It Come From?

If I recall cor­rectly, I met Cathie in the ele­va­tor at a BEA/​BBC func­tion and she for­warded me a pre­view copy.

Why Did I Choose It?

Mem­oirs aren’t usu­ally my type of book, but this was one of those that sucked me in from the first few pages.

My Review:

The book starts out with two women cruis­ing down the road attempt­ing to find a turnoff to go and see a show at some back road biker bar.  When they can’t find the road and dis­cover that they’ve dri­ven all the way to the state bor­der, they just keep on going.  I was intrigued to find out where this book would lead.

Cathie has sent her chil­dren off to col­lege and is left by her­self and in a des­per­ate attempt to meet some peo­ple she places and ad for a women’s weekly group.  This is where she meets Denise.  A strong willed, in your face woman who sur­vives through mak­ing things work for her whether it’s her art and fram­ing shop, or going to tag sales and con­vinc­ing peo­ple to prac­ti­cally give her things for nothing.

Cathie doesn’t real­ize it then, but Denise is fight­ing MS.  As time goes on their friend­ship grows and faces the strug­gles all friend­ship face at one time or another, and Denise’s MS symp­toms present them­selves more and more often.

This is truly a heart­warm­ing story of a woman who has been given the short end of the stick when it comes to life.  A sin­gle par­ent of two chil­dren, no viable means of sup­port­ing her­self and her fam­ily, she does what she needs to do to get by.  And yet she man­ages to sur­vive and flour­ish learn­ing from life and even­tu­ally from Denise that some­times you have to stack the deck in your favor to make it work out in the end.

You’ll find your­self laugh­ing along with them and maybe even cry­ing at times.

Truly a won­der­ful read and I would sug­gest that you pick it up if you like a good story of friendship.