Take a photo of a barcode or cover
I had such high hopes for this book, but it could not even begin to live up to them. My hopes were not the reason I dislike this book; it was an unenjoyable slog regardless of what I wanted. There were 5 main characters, 4 of which were given POV chapters, and yet not a single one ended being more than a one-dimensional parody of a person. Lizzie is the good wife with a diminishing (or diminished) career, riding the coattails of her husband. She is willfully oblivious to her husbands concerns and seems to build her entire being around being his wife. Michael is a wanna-be F. Scott. He thinks he's amazing yet can't get lightning to strike twice. He definitely hits every box in the self-destructive artist cliche, but it comes off as whiny rather than tragic. Finn is the selfish man-child who can't take responsibility for anything important and is always looking for the next fun thing. He's pretty oblivious to others' well-being, just a stereotypical male lead. Taylor is the neurotic, insecure, and snobbish wife who has no function outside of her daughter's life.
The four characters do not deviate from their prescribed set of cliches throughout the entire book. The only character that would likely have been of interest was the regretfully named Snow, Taylor's daughter, yet she gets no chance to tell her story. The entire story revolves around these 2 married couples, almost all of whom hate their spouse and wish they had married the other spouse, and adultery. It isn't interesting adultery, based around hard questions of betrayal, morality, or dissociation between body and emotion. It is merely a plot point to help drive the final twist and provide some momentum for change. Absent the adultery these characters would have maintained a static existence. Honestly, I would have been happy if they had all been killed off in a fiery crash because they were insufferable and without redemption.
Do not get me wrong; I have no problem with unlikeable leads. Sometimes the protagonist has to be alien for the story to get its point across. Other times it provides a sense of karma when the protagonist fails. In successful stories with unlikeable protagonists, however, the unlikeability must serve a purpose to the story. Here the characters were insufferable for the sake of being insufferable. I get the feeling Ms. Ephron settled on 4 archetypes and then tried to make the characters as unique as possible by adhering strictly and unwaveringly to the archetypes themselves.
If you want to here generally well off people complain about their lives while spouting freshmen level psuedo philosophy and maintaining insufferable yet static personalities, then you may like this book.
The four characters do not deviate from their prescribed set of cliches throughout the entire book. The only character that would likely have been of interest was the regretfully named Snow, Taylor's daughter, yet she gets no chance to tell her story. The entire story revolves around these 2 married couples, almost all of whom hate their spouse and wish they had married the other spouse, and adultery. It isn't interesting adultery, based around hard questions of betrayal, morality, or dissociation between body and emotion. It is merely a plot point to help drive the final twist and provide some momentum for change. Absent the adultery these characters would have maintained a static existence. Honestly, I would have been happy if they had all been killed off in a fiery crash because they were insufferable and without redemption.
Do not get me wrong; I have no problem with unlikeable leads. Sometimes the protagonist has to be alien for the story to get its point across. Other times it provides a sense of karma when the protagonist fails. In successful stories with unlikeable protagonists, however, the unlikeability must serve a purpose to the story. Here the characters were insufferable for the sake of being insufferable. I get the feeling Ms. Ephron settled on 4 archetypes and then tried to make the characters as unique as possible by adhering strictly and unwaveringly to the archetypes themselves.
If you want to here generally well off people complain about their lives while spouting freshmen level psuedo philosophy and maintaining insufferable yet static personalities, then you may like this book.