Definitely a good read

This novel reunites four former friends and students in Paris for the 85th birthday of their teacher and mentor, Anya. The four parted on bad terms when they graduated from Anya's famous Parisian art school. And to make things even more complicated, each of them has a skeleton in the closet - or a ghost in her past - that makes the thought of returning to Paris a little daunting. However, out of a need for closure and her love for Anya, each decides to make the trip, not just for the party, but for the three weeks prior.

Naturally, all four women get in touch with Anya as soon as they arrive in Paris. Anya loves all four girls and works hard to resolve the conflict between them (not to mention the fact that she doesn't want their rift to ruin her party). She has three weeks to accomplish her task, and she's successful, of course - it wouldn't be much of a story if she weren't. I was a little disappointed in the origins of their conflict. I expected something scandalous, and it was actually rather silly. But I guess that makes it realistic - an extraordinary number of rifts between friends and family are over things that would seem ridiculous to an outsider. Was Ms. Bradford sneaking in a lesson here? Good for her if she was - it's one a lot of us need to learn.

The other drama in the book revolves around the four women taking care of unfinished emotional business while they're in Paris. Some of the unfinished business is trivial; some of it is truly traumatic and moving.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was the treatment of the characters - breadth rather than depth. We learn enough about each of them for the ending to make sense and be satisfying, but we don't learn enough about any of them to truly care about them - and I like to care about the characters in the books I read; I'm kind of sappy that way.

The book started kind of slowly, and I almost put it down. But I hate to do that, so I kept reading, and before long, I was hooked enough to stay up late one night to finish the book. I'm glad I did!