Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: Happiness Sold Separately, by Lolly Winston

The Story: Elinor and Ted are married.  They want babies.  They cannot seem to have babies.  It is depressing.

Ted starts screwing around with his personal trainer, Gina.  Elinor finds out.  She concocts a crazy scheme.  It works.  Ted moves out and Elinor goes a little crazy.

Gina has a secret son.  The son doesn’t like her.  But the son does like Ted.

Elinor becomes obsessed with a diseased tree, then with the tree doctor.

Elinor and Ted try to make it work.

Can they do it?

What I Thought: In college, one of my roommates had Lolly Winston (did her mom name her Lolly or is that a pen name?) book called Good Grief.  One day, it was snowing and I finished my book. Out of pure desperation I picked up Good Grief. I am not a big chic lit fan, but I was surprised that I really didn’t hate it.  It was not horribly written and kind of dealt with real issues.  So, I saw this book at the thrift store and decided that some day it would make a great “brain candy” book.  Last week, I was sick and irritable and decided to give this a go.

Not great.

Part of the problem, for me, is that these people are unlike any real people in the whole world.  Elinor finds out that her husband is cheating on her.  We are able to read her thoughts.  She never gets mad.  Seriously. Never.  It was distracting for me.  I know everyone deals with things differently, but really? The only thing you feel is despondent? I don’t buy it.  The author also attempts to tell this story from Ted’s point of view, problem being:  Ted thinks and acts like a woman.  Distracting and unbelievable.

I also just want to throw this out there for people who are pregnant or sensitive to such things:  Ted and Elinor’s infertility (and later miscarriage) are not just lightly discussed.  They really are the main subject of this book, although from the jacket I really didn’t get that impression.  I’ve tried to actively avoid books that make my mind drift to miscarriage, so I was kind of upset to find out that that was what was going on here.

To be fair, I was looking for a light, easy to read book.  I found it.  There’s just not much here.  I think that by approaching “real” issues (infertility, cheating, kids, yadda yadda) the author tried to make it less fluffy, but the fact is she just dealt with them in a really unrealistic way and that really took a lot of the heat out of what she was trying to do.

Conclusion: Not terrible “brain candy,” but really not worth your precious reading-time.