Is there anything you wouldn't do for a loved one if they were dying? That's a morbid question, for sure, but the dilemma at the center of Some Bright Nowhere , Ann Packer's new novel, makes a reader wonder about such things.

Packer's main characters, Claire and Eliot, are a couple in their 60s who've been married for almost four decades. For the past eight years, Claire has been battling cancer and Eliot has been a diligent caretaker. Caretaking, he reflects, is a daily amalgam of "Helping, soothing, driving, phoning, cooking, listening, tending, waiting, learning, remembering, deciding, forgoing. A lot of forgoing."

When the novel opens, Claire and Eliot have just walked out of their final appointment with Claire's oncologist — final, because there's nothing more to be done. The co

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