Book of the Week: ELLEN IN PIECES by Caroline Adderson

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She’s sexy, she’s funny, she’s way too outspoken — and like many of us, by the time she turns 40, Ellen McGinty has lived a seeming multitude of lives. Hers is a story of ongoing reinvention: from freedom-loving hippie on B.C.’s Cordova Island to Type-A publicist in Vancouver and finally, in a happy return to youthful ambitions, a successful artist. Blissfully married and then bitterly divorced, she takes a lover twenty years her junior, frets over her two grown daughters (one a former drug addict) and her young grandchildren. Constructed as a series of connected short stories, Ellen in Pieces is unique, wise, funny and heartbreaking. And just in case – in the usual blur of busy days — you’ve forgotten, it makes you remember how very precious life is.