1545. Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships by Nina Totenberg

This is an off-genre topic, not our usual murder mystery/thriller.

 Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships has been written by Nina Totenberg about her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the recently deceased Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. She was nominated by Bill Clinton and served on the court for 27 years. It’s my opinion that Ginsberg was a once-in-a-lifetime character who constantly showed grace and wisdom in her decisions.

 

This was more of an autobiography by Totenberg than a book that strictly focused on Ginsberg. Totenberg was an interesting woman who had some important differences from Ginsberg, such as the fact that Totenberg dropped out of Boston College in her third year. To write that Totenberg lived a less strict live than did Ginsberg would be a vast understatement. Totenberg came from wealth and it was her mother’s friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt that led to her internship at the White House and subsequent rise to being an insider in Washington political circles. Ginsberg gave from jews who escaped the holocaust in 1935 and who started life in the U.S. as paupers, although her father had already been recognized as a world-renowned virtuoso violinist. Both had to contend with careers in which women had not yet found a place, Ginsberg in the law and Totenberg in journalism.

 

As the subtitle suggests, this was a story about friendships. The friendships were not only Totenberg and Ginsberg, but Totenberg’s circle included other women who were fighting their way through female-resistant corporate structures, including Cokie Roberts and Leslie Stahl. Totenberg’s life was interesting enough on its own, and her relationship with Ginsberg only added a significant richness to the story. It’s remarkable that both Ginsberg and the author maintained rigid professional standards throughout their relationship, never revealing information to one another that was protected. The same can be said about Totenberg’s relationship with her husband, a physician who was treating Ginsberg and her friends, but never broke their doctor-patient confidentiality, so she did not learn of Ginsberg’s last and fatal bout with cancer until the very end of life.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and give it a high rating. It is a powerful story about love. I consumed this one in audiobook format, and it was Totenberg who read her own novel, which surely enhanced the experience for this reader.