I feel like I have read this book instead of all of the mid-century books written by men about their terrible marriages to women, and I think that is the correct choice. But I'm still not entirely sure what I think about this book.
It is a classic book where the people feel real and yet I don't actually like any of them, or perhaps that's why they're so unlikable, because of how real they are. Toby is a 40 year old doctor separated from his wife Rachel, and it's a shock to the system to be reading books about 40 year olds getting divorced, because I am forty! These people are me, or could be! And yet they are not - they are people I know, though, and they are people who I could have become, and this is the sort of book, the sort of story, that makes me say oh thank god. Thank god I didn't decide to marry a man.
And yet, it's also a book that makes me grapple with how I have deliberately opted out of some things, without actually making a choice to opt in to others. The narrator for most of this book isn't Toby, or Rachel, it's one of Toby's oldest friends Elizabeth, who is also going through her own marriage and life struggles, the struggle of who she once was and who she is now and what she gave up along the way. And so we're getting the tale of Toby and Rachel's marriage from an outsider, but one who fundamentally sides with Toby, except for when she doesn't, when the narrator herself becomes a part of the story in a completely different way.
It's an impressive book, one that navigates these perspectives in ways that I both admire and was affected by, and by the end of the book, when we finally meet Rachel, it is like a shock to the system. And yet, while I recognize everyone in this book, I don't know that this is the story I want to be reading, or that I need to be reading. It is true without necessarily being right. And yet I've been thinking about it for a month. So maybe it was, after after.
Grade: B
It is a classic book where the people feel real and yet I don't actually like any of them, or perhaps that's why they're so unlikable, because of how real they are. Toby is a 40 year old doctor separated from his wife Rachel, and it's a shock to the system to be reading books about 40 year olds getting divorced, because I am forty! These people are me, or could be! And yet they are not - they are people I know, though, and they are people who I could have become, and this is the sort of book, the sort of story, that makes me say oh thank god. Thank god I didn't decide to marry a man.
And yet, it's also a book that makes me grapple with how I have deliberately opted out of some things, without actually making a choice to opt in to others. The narrator for most of this book isn't Toby, or Rachel, it's one of Toby's oldest friends Elizabeth, who is also going through her own marriage and life struggles, the struggle of who she once was and who she is now and what she gave up along the way. And so we're getting the tale of Toby and Rachel's marriage from an outsider, but one who fundamentally sides with Toby, except for when she doesn't, when the narrator herself becomes a part of the story in a completely different way.
It's an impressive book, one that navigates these perspectives in ways that I both admire and was affected by, and by the end of the book, when we finally meet Rachel, it is like a shock to the system. And yet, while I recognize everyone in this book, I don't know that this is the story I want to be reading, or that I need to be reading. It is true without necessarily being right. And yet I've been thinking about it for a month. So maybe it was, after after.
Grade: B
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