ENTERTAINMENT REALM

Expiration Date , by Sherril Jaffe. Publisher: The Permanent Press(April 1, 2011). Literary fiction. Hardcover, 192 pages.

Now Flora wondered if that weren’t a survival mechanism on her mother’s part. Muriel gave up living in the present in order to live in the future, in the only way the future could ever be experienced. In this way, she continued to stay alive beyond the present.

Flora thinks she’s going to die on her 60th birthday. A professor and wife of a Rabbi, the San Franciscan had a dream or vision many years ago in which she was told when but not how she’d die. So she’s rather obsessing on this and in doing so fails to see the world about her and to truly enjoy herself. Simultaneously her widowed 86-year-old mother Muriel embarks on extensive traveling and love affairs. Expiration Date is that rare find in a novel these days. It contemplates aging—not glossing over the negatives or puffing out the positives—but with flair and honesty. It also vividly captures the intricacies and challenges in most mother-daughter relationships. [“..with her mother, Flora felt ugly, inadequate, and inferior.”]

Expiration Date proves both humorous and vitalizing. Turns out that maybe expiration dates are only in our minds. Life doesn’t begin or end at a particular time. Those are just the silly notions that our society deems necessary or sensible.

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