My Next Read - Possibly

After my disappointment with An Italian Affair, I read The Sixteen Pleasures. Yes, Annie, this was much better!
Now, my dilemma: Should I order this hardcover, The Hand that Just Held Mine or continue with my Florence-inspired readings, The Birth of Venus?

Has anyone read The Hand that Just Held Mine?
Here's an excerpt of a review which piqued my curiosity:

"Ultimately, I think this story is about the ferocity of love. Specifically the love between a mother and a child. The bond that exists between them - an invisible, nearly unbreakable bond. A bond that is magical, and terrifying and inexplicable. There is beauty in this story, beauty in words and action and descriptions. But none was more beautiful for me than the story about that bond.

The women we become after children...We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, perspective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and - look! - they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squished can along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going...We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us."