finished reading

This is indeed a love story.  Jane, Abe, their son Max, and Central Park are the central characters of this character study.  The narrative thread is uniquely written--more fragments of conversations and memories than action.  Yet, the characters are fully developed, and Central Park is lovingly included.  I learned a lot about the Park, and even though I have been there, I want to explore more.  

The audio narrator is a favorite; however, I wish it had been read by a male narrator, since the majority of the narration consists of Abe's recollections.

From the publisher:

An intimate and lyrical celebration of great love, great art, and the sacrifices we make for both

For fifty years Abe and Jane have been coming to Central Park, as starry-eyed young lovers, as frustrated and exhausted parents, as artists watching their careers take flight. They came alone when they needed to get away from each other, and together when they had something important to discuss. The Park has been their witness for half a century of love. Until now.

Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew—their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives—and the parts they didn’t always want to know—the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs. Told in various points of view, even in conversation with Central Park itself, these voices weave in and out to paint a portrait as complicated and essential as love itself.