Five Days (Kennedy) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
A gripping emotional rollercoaster, pressing so many buttons it’s likely to have readers examining their own what-might-have-beens.
Daily Mail (UK)


Laura Warren is a radiographic technician in Maine, trained to spot disease in others, but unable to determine the cause of her own sadness in the bumpy 11th novel from Kennedy.... [She] jumps at the opportunity for a weekend conference in Boston. There she meets Richard Copeland... [and the two] find in their shared loneliness a common longing to lead a better life together, if they can find the courage to change. While Laura and Richard’s quickly developing relationship is rarely believable, Laura’s confusion and fear are well drawn, and Kennedy ably raises questions about marriage, identity, and happiness.
Publishers Weekly


Kennedy (The Moment) has a way with women, or at least with women characters.... He does this so well that the reader may double-check the author's name to see whether "he" isn't really "she." Laura, 42, married Dan Warren 23 years ago.... She is also the family's mainstay both financially and emotionally.... When Laura attends a work conference in Boston, she meets Richard, a married insurance salesman. Within a few days, the two recognize their unlikely but increasing connection. Finding in each other a mirror image of lost passion, sad marriages, broken dreams, self-doubt, and a corresponding regard for wordplay and art, they offer each other the bolstering and applause they so sorely lack at home. —Sheila M. Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC
Library Journal


The prolific Kennedy explores his favored themes of mortality, love, and loss in this fluidly written tale. Deftly depicting how certain choices can unexpectedly narrow a life, instead of expanding it, he has much to say about the nature of happiness, the difficulty of change, and the great divide between obligation and desire.
Booklist


Two middle-aged, ordinary Mainers have an opportunity to alter their lives through love. Laura, a radiology technician in a small town, is a seasoned diagnostician of the benign or deadly menaces lurking within her patients, even if delivery of the good or bad news must be left to her supervising physician. The fact that she has sold herself short all her life has led to disappointments on every level.... When, at a conference in a Boston hotel, she meets, by chance, insurance salesman Richard, she soon sees the parallels in their lives.... As passionate embraces cinch the deal, it seems that these two lost souls have lucked into a second chance—but will they dare to take it? Despite pages of self-revelatory dialogue, Richard and Laura remain ciphers who may not command enough reader identification to make us care whether their future promises new love or merely a fresh hell. Despite some character underdevelopment, a fine tale of lives re-examined.
Kirkus Reviews