Just Like Always Author:Elizabeth-Ann Sachs Janie had never had a long stay in the hospital but Courtney had. Both has scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, and both were to be put into a cast. Both would probably need surgery before they went home. But aside from the fact that they were both occupying the same hospital room for the same reason, the two had almost nothing in common. ... more »Janie loved to play baseball, and approached everything that came her way with the subtlety of a sledge hammer. Courtney, on the other hand, lived in a fantasy world, Greno. She and here friends even had a Greno club, and she saw beauty and delicacy wherever she looked.
That two so unlike persons should be friends seemed highly unlikely on the day they both arrived at the hospital. In fact their first meeting, in the hospital rest room, with Janie standing on the toilet to read the graffitti on the walls, was anything but promising. Yet drawn together by their common loneliness, their common fears, and their need to share what was happening to them, they slowly came to understand each other. Janie really grasped the meaning of Greno; and Courtney could join Janie in acts of hospital rebellion that never would have occurred to her, and probably would have horrified her, only days before.
In spite of its setting and its serious background, this is a funny book. It is also touching, tender, and warmly human. Finally it is a story about how friendship grows and what love really is.« less