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A review by steffkg45
You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz
2.0
I've been venting to my friends about what a disappointing book this was so I feel like a full review is warranted here. I had high hopes for this given it was made into a show on HBO and the author is critically acclaimed but just....no.
One of the biggest problems I had with this book was it went into so much pointless detail about Grace's day to day mundane life and how anxious and upset she was. Obviously yes, that is a reasonable feeling for a character in her position to have, but it seemed like the author went overboard in describing over and over how paralyzed she was, how she wanted to vomit, how she did vomit, how her personal items somehow became meaningless because her marriage fell apart, she had no idea how to communicate to people, etc etc. And then just rambling about Grace's judgmental thoughts about others such as the snobby moms at the private school, her weird and honestly somewhat racist obsesssion with Malaga Alves' body, the pointless musings at the end about the bluegrass or whatever band in CT (how does she not know "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"??). Not only did it include pointless musings from Grace, but every character action seemed to be described in excruciating detail. Why do we need to know that when Mitchell gets water he changes the tap from hot to cold and checks the temperature before filling the glass? I think readers know how sinks work. I agree with the other reviews about this book needing to be edited better.
I also felt like the characters were all stereotypes. Grace and the other private school moms were extremely stereotypical wealthy New Yorkers (it really annoyed me how it included the trope of New Yorkers only wearing black, Harlem being "scary", plus why was the comment about the doorman insulting?? And the whole Birkin bag thing! The gratuitous mentions of 9/11 were also really unnecessary), Malaga was not a fully realized character- she was basically a living caricature of a sensual Latina woman who of course was then no longer living, Eva was a cliched evil step mom, Jonathan a cliched hero doctor, Henry some kind of flawless wonder child, even the patients at her therapy practice seemed like stereotypes of sad women who had married some awful guy- I wonder why none of the marital issues described were related to normal mutual incompatability- it seemed like all of the couples were evil asshole men and women who "should have known."
How the characters interacted with each other also strained credulity. Why did Grace always just walk away or in one case literally run away when people kept alluding to things she was in the dark about or Jonathan not being who he really was? Wouldn't most people ask what people are talking about? It seemed like Grace kept making up her own weird conclusions about things without speaking to people although I do give the book credit for acknowledging this to an extent when the publisher brings it up to her at the very end. Her relationship with her dad and step mom made absolutely no sense. Why would Grace expect her step mom to love her like a daughter when she married Grace's father when Grace was an adult? I was also baffled by their reaction to Jonathan going missing, the anger over him missing dinner, and the whole thing about the china set that they actually do point out- Grace should have just spoken up to ask for it! It seemed like it was all just to drive home the "evil stepmom" point. All these things about Grace's behavior would have made more sense if she were designed to be an unlikeable character but I did not get the sense the author was going for that.
Other non sensical things were how Vita apparently hated Jonathan on sight and then Grace and Vita let their whole relationship fall apart without ever talking to each other- or I guess one drunken conversation? Why would Grace never think to ask what the deal is? And it was super weird how everything was just magically ok when they met up again- I get that friends reconnect, but it seemed way too "perfect." The reconnecting with her in laws seemed way too picture perfect (especially with them adopting Malaga's baby! That was so awful it was presented as heartwarming that they renamed her baby, that's actually really rude and also racist since I think Malaga gave her a name reflecting her Colombian heritage), Eva suddenly being this nice person, the neighbor who she reconnected with, even Henry fitting in perfectly in his new school was strange (the musings from Grace about the quality of public schools was extremely obnoxious as a side note). And it was strange too how other characters just dropped off. What happened to Sylvia who was trying to help Grace?
The whole bit about Grace having to flee NYC and the time line of that was also baffling. Having to leave for a few days is fair enough, but the news cycle wouldn't focus on this for MONTHS if there were no updates on the case which is what was implied. How was she not in contact with people for that length of time (since among other people she ignored, she apparently just ignored her publisher and they were not mad at her and wanted to still promote her book)?? How did the detectives take that long to find Jonathan? To be fair, I have not experienced anything remotely like this so maybe I am off on this, but it just seemed so odd how she had to completely move, sell her amazing apartment that she owned outright thanks to her family, start a whole new practice, and what not. Yes, this is super traumatic, I get it, but it just seemed contrived for maximum uneccessary drama. When I read the back of the book before starting it I thought this was going to be about her rebuilding her life because her husband's actions put her life in danger, not that she was just ashamed. Oh and conveniently, she had plenty of money to do all this and Jonathan very conveniently did not steal all their money when fleeing himself.
Getting to Jonathan, it was said he was a psychopath but I don't think that was adequately demonstrated. He just sounded like a lying, cheating, temperamental asshole. The big reveal from his family made absolutely no sense and I had to read that multiple times because I thought the whole thing about the younger brother dying of a fever was a cover for Jonathan actually murdering him but the parents really were saying they left their young child with a high fever at home while they went to a bat mitzvah, blamed their teenage son when the fever got worse, and then wondered why he had different stories about why the kid was outside playing? Who in their right mind does that? That absolutely sounded like awful parenting, even for the 70s, and the whole thing about Jonathan being protected so he wouldn't be prosecuted was absolutely not something that would happen because no one in real life would hold him responsible for his brother's death, legally or otherwise. The other descriptions of his behavior just sounded like he was a huge jerk, I was confused about how that was supposed to show he was seriously a psychopath. The rambling story from that Turd guy was only vaguely enlightening and mostly pointless since it seemed to repeat a lot of what we already knew along with pointless side comments. Speaking of that when Grace brought Jonathan being a psychopath up to his parents, she is absolutely not qualified as a practioner to diagnose someone as a psychopath and I was also really irritated when she was describing someone else as "a little bipolar," and she wondered if the Turd guy had autism, no therapist should talk about mental health that way- if her character was meant to be a bad therapist, sure, but it seemed like she was supposed to be some amazing one. The whole thing about the letter from Jonathan was strange as well, I wish the book had had showed how he was lying about everything with some kind of reunion or her confronting him when the cops brought him in instead of just the detective saying how he made everything up, fled to Brazil, etc. Last- did Grace and Jonathan not have any kind of interaction between their first date and the present?? (Aside from bringing up all the places they "made love.") It was so odd how Grace kept flashing back to their first meeting as if nothing happened in between.
Ugh and a last thing about Grace, but why does Grace, a 39 year old wealthy woman in 2014 not know how to use a cell phone?? She apparently doesn't know how to log on to check her bank accounts either since that is described as taking a "humiliating" hour on the phone.
I realize there is some irony in leaving a long rambling review for a book that was too long and rambly, but there was just so much that drove me nuts about this book. I only finished it because I wanted to know what happened and was waiting for the "thriller" part and it just completely dragged on and fizzled at the end. I looked up the plot of The Undoing (the HBO show based on this book) and it looks like it has been changed in a number of ways to hopefully make a lot more sense and be less annoying. I will end with, I have been to Long Island a number of times and never once have been offered Entenmann's and coffee. How disappointing. This book has inspired me to pay a visit to Zabar's though where I have not been in way too long so that is a positive.
One of the biggest problems I had with this book was it went into so much pointless detail about Grace's day to day mundane life and how anxious and upset she was. Obviously yes, that is a reasonable feeling for a character in her position to have, but it seemed like the author went overboard in describing over and over how paralyzed she was, how she wanted to vomit, how she did vomit, how her personal items somehow became meaningless because her marriage fell apart, she had no idea how to communicate to people, etc etc. And then just rambling about Grace's judgmental thoughts about others such as the snobby moms at the private school, her weird and honestly somewhat racist obsesssion with Malaga Alves' body, the pointless musings at the end about the bluegrass or whatever band in CT (how does she not know "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"??). Not only did it include pointless musings from Grace, but every character action seemed to be described in excruciating detail. Why do we need to know that when Mitchell gets water he changes the tap from hot to cold and checks the temperature before filling the glass? I think readers know how sinks work. I agree with the other reviews about this book needing to be edited better.
I also felt like the characters were all stereotypes. Grace and the other private school moms were extremely stereotypical wealthy New Yorkers (it really annoyed me how it included the trope of New Yorkers only wearing black, Harlem being "scary", plus why was the comment about the doorman insulting?? And the whole Birkin bag thing! The gratuitous mentions of 9/11 were also really unnecessary), Malaga was not a fully realized character- she was basically a living caricature of a sensual Latina woman who of course was then no longer living, Eva was a cliched evil step mom, Jonathan a cliched hero doctor, Henry some kind of flawless wonder child, even the patients at her therapy practice seemed like stereotypes of sad women who had married some awful guy- I wonder why none of the marital issues described were related to normal mutual incompatability- it seemed like all of the couples were evil asshole men and women who "should have known."
How the characters interacted with each other also strained credulity. Why did Grace always just walk away or in one case literally run away when people kept alluding to things she was in the dark about or Jonathan not being who he really was? Wouldn't most people ask what people are talking about? It seemed like Grace kept making up her own weird conclusions about things without speaking to people although I do give the book credit for acknowledging this to an extent when the publisher brings it up to her at the very end. Her relationship with her dad and step mom made absolutely no sense. Why would Grace expect her step mom to love her like a daughter when she married Grace's father when Grace was an adult? I was also baffled by their reaction to Jonathan going missing, the anger over him missing dinner, and the whole thing about the china set that they actually do point out- Grace should have just spoken up to ask for it! It seemed like it was all just to drive home the "evil stepmom" point. All these things about Grace's behavior would have made more sense if she were designed to be an unlikeable character but I did not get the sense the author was going for that.
Other non sensical things were how Vita apparently hated Jonathan on sight and then Grace and Vita let their whole relationship fall apart without ever talking to each other- or I guess one drunken conversation? Why would Grace never think to ask what the deal is? And it was super weird how everything was just magically ok when they met up again- I get that friends reconnect, but it seemed way too "perfect." The reconnecting with her in laws seemed way too picture perfect (especially with them adopting Malaga's baby! That was so awful it was presented as heartwarming that they renamed her baby, that's actually really rude and also racist since I think Malaga gave her a name reflecting her Colombian heritage), Eva suddenly being this nice person, the neighbor who she reconnected with, even Henry fitting in perfectly in his new school was strange (the musings from Grace about the quality of public schools was extremely obnoxious as a side note). And it was strange too how other characters just dropped off. What happened to Sylvia who was trying to help Grace?
The whole bit about Grace having to flee NYC and the time line of that was also baffling. Having to leave for a few days is fair enough, but the news cycle wouldn't focus on this for MONTHS if there were no updates on the case which is what was implied. How was she not in contact with people for that length of time (since among other people she ignored, she apparently just ignored her publisher and they were not mad at her and wanted to still promote her book)?? How did the detectives take that long to find Jonathan? To be fair, I have not experienced anything remotely like this so maybe I am off on this, but it just seemed so odd how she had to completely move, sell her amazing apartment that she owned outright thanks to her family, start a whole new practice, and what not. Yes, this is super traumatic, I get it, but it just seemed contrived for maximum uneccessary drama. When I read the back of the book before starting it I thought this was going to be about her rebuilding her life because her husband's actions put her life in danger, not that she was just ashamed. Oh and conveniently, she had plenty of money to do all this and Jonathan very conveniently did not steal all their money when fleeing himself.
Getting to Jonathan, it was said he was a psychopath but I don't think that was adequately demonstrated. He just sounded like a lying, cheating, temperamental asshole. The big reveal from his family made absolutely no sense and I had to read that multiple times because I thought the whole thing about the younger brother dying of a fever was a cover for Jonathan actually murdering him but the parents really were saying they left their young child with a high fever at home while they went to a bat mitzvah, blamed their teenage son when the fever got worse, and then wondered why he had different stories about why the kid was outside playing? Who in their right mind does that? That absolutely sounded like awful parenting, even for the 70s, and the whole thing about Jonathan being protected so he wouldn't be prosecuted was absolutely not something that would happen because no one in real life would hold him responsible for his brother's death, legally or otherwise. The other descriptions of his behavior just sounded like he was a huge jerk, I was confused about how that was supposed to show he was seriously a psychopath. The rambling story from that Turd guy was only vaguely enlightening and mostly pointless since it seemed to repeat a lot of what we already knew along with pointless side comments. Speaking of that when Grace brought Jonathan being a psychopath up to his parents, she is absolutely not qualified as a practioner to diagnose someone as a psychopath and I was also really irritated when she was describing someone else as "a little bipolar," and she wondered if the Turd guy had autism, no therapist should talk about mental health that way- if her character was meant to be a bad therapist, sure, but it seemed like she was supposed to be some amazing one. The whole thing about the letter from Jonathan was strange as well, I wish the book had had showed how he was lying about everything with some kind of reunion or her confronting him when the cops brought him in instead of just the detective saying how he made everything up, fled to Brazil, etc. Last- did Grace and Jonathan not have any kind of interaction between their first date and the present?? (Aside from bringing up all the places they "made love.") It was so odd how Grace kept flashing back to their first meeting as if nothing happened in between.
Ugh and a last thing about Grace, but why does Grace, a 39 year old wealthy woman in 2014 not know how to use a cell phone?? She apparently doesn't know how to log on to check her bank accounts either since that is described as taking a "humiliating" hour on the phone.
I realize there is some irony in leaving a long rambling review for a book that was too long and rambly, but there was just so much that drove me nuts about this book. I only finished it because I wanted to know what happened and was waiting for the "thriller" part and it just completely dragged on and fizzled at the end. I looked up the plot of The Undoing (the HBO show based on this book) and it looks like it has been changed in a number of ways to hopefully make a lot more sense and be less annoying. I will end with, I have been to Long Island a number of times and never once have been offered Entenmann's and coffee. How disappointing. This book has inspired me to pay a visit to Zabar's though where I have not been in way too long so that is a positive.