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A review by ktrain3900
We Were Pretending by Hannah Gersen
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
An almost deceptively simple story of friendship, family, work, and the meaning of life. I keep coming back to this book as an allegory for white privilege, barely touching on matters of politics or race yet centered in Washington, DC. Instead, it concerns itself with climate change, the environment, and the fuzzy boundaries between science and nature, expectation and reality, what's legal and what's moral. Leigh, a thirtysomething divorcee and mother, is our wishy-washy, bougie every(white)woman who, although she deals with some consequences, never seems to pay the full price of any of her mistakes.
At first I found the book a bit tedious, the characters mostly mundane, frustrating, or annoying, but then I found myself turning pages more rapidly, barely able to wait and see what terrible decisions Leigh might make next in her attempt to live a life of meaning, and how she might escape what should inevitably come after but often doesn't. A lot of us, myself included, often feel we're pulled along in our lives like leaves in a stream, unable to change the current, or alternately feel mired in the mud of choices we made with little forethought as a different self. Only now I'm getting stuck on how much of this is more privilege than oppression.
See? Deceptively simple. Almost. It's debatable if we need the set up at the very beginning, despite what we later find we've learned from it, as we never come back to this moment at the end. It's a solid sophomore effort, dotted with threads of potential just waiting to be tugged. And who knows, perhaps I'll come back and fiddle with that start rating?
At first I found the book a bit tedious, the characters mostly mundane, frustrating, or annoying, but then I found myself turning pages more rapidly, barely able to wait and see what terrible decisions Leigh might make next in her attempt to live a life of meaning, and how she might escape what should inevitably come after but often doesn't. A lot of us, myself included, often feel we're pulled along in our lives like leaves in a stream, unable to change the current, or alternately feel mired in the mud of choices we made with little forethought as a different self. Only now I'm getting stuck on how much of this is more privilege than oppression.
See? Deceptively simple. Almost. It's debatable if we need the set up at the very beginning, despite what we later find we've learned from it, as we never come back to this moment at the end. It's a solid sophomore effort, dotted with threads of potential just waiting to be tugged. And who knows, perhaps I'll come back and fiddle with that start rating?