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Book Review of Hot Flashes

Hot Flashes
Hot Flashes
Author: Barbara Raskin
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Book Type: Mass Market Paperback
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âA generation must tacitly agree to remember certain things in certain ways and refuse to be dissuaded from its chosen version of the past. Otherwise, the past won't stay put. If we're not vigilant about preserving our own history, someone will always come along and try to correct our memories. And then how will we know who we were or who we are now?â

So Barbara Raskin begins âHot Flashesâ, a book by turns funny, vulgar, perceptive , outrageous â" and brutally honest in every line. The novel tells of group of women who came to adulthood after WWII â" the âDepression Era Babiesâ -- and lived through the challenging decades of the conformist fifties and strife-ridden sixties, coming together in 1985 when one of their friends dies unexpectedly. As they face their own mortality, look back over their lives, and come to terms with the future, they learn as much about themselves as they do about their friend's life.

It's not often a book literally brings me to tears, but the final scene of this one did just that.