Monday, August 5, 2013

He's Gone

Novel by Deb Caletti

Have you ever been in a waiting room at the dentist or in line at the grocery store or any other place you thought you'd just be quietly alone and the person next to you suddenly tells you more about him or herself than you expected to hear? It's an odd moment, and for me it depends on my mood. Sometimes I feel it's touchingly human and other times I feel a little violated. Didn't want to know about your surgery or why you're mad at your spouse, but thanks. 

That's my feelings about the narrator in this book.

When I first started reading, I liked how she seems so human, so clear on every day thoughts, like how you have to wash cereal bowls right away or they are the worst to scrape out later, and how drinking coffee alone in the morning is its own little a miracle.

Then the crazy came out.

Granted, the story is about a woman who wakes up to find her husband missing and has only hazy memories of coming home from a party the night before, so that's enough to make you feel crazy right along with her. But as she spends the rest of the book trying to find out what's happened to him, you get the story of their affair together, divorces from their first spouses, and rocky marriage since then, along with all her guilt and battered woman syndrome and self doubt. It's well written but intense. Not the easy read I thought it would be from the cover. I guess I should have read the title and back cover better. Or just not judge a book by its...you know.

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