With FIVE DAYS, Douglas Kennedy has crafted a brilliant meditation on regret, fidelity, family, and second chances that will have you breathlessly turning pages to find out what happened in the past and what will happen next. At once heartbreaking and hopeful, it is a powerful new work of fiction by an internationally acclaimed writer at the height of his powers.

You don't have to have one emotion at a time.

What I suddenly understood was that a thank-you note isn't the price you pay for receiving a gift, as so many children think it is, a kind of minimum tribute or toll, but an opportunity to count your blessings. And gratitude isn't what you give in exchange for something; it's what you feel when you are blessed--blessed to have family and friends who care about you, and who want to see you happy. Hence the joy from thanking.

We’re all in the end-of-our-life book club, whether we acknowledge it or not; each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one.

I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.

It's not hard to read about death abstractly. I do find it tough when a character I love dies, of course. You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them.

As a reader, you’re often inside one or more character heads, so you know what they’re feeling, even if they can’t exactly say it, or they say it so obliquely that the other characters don’t catch it. Readers are frequently reminded of the gulf between what people say and what they mean, and such moments prod us to become more attuned to gesture, tone, and language.