This is a comic novel about a short marriage and a long painful divorce. The writer has previously written for TV shows (Schitt’s Creek) and magazines. You can kind of tell: this novel is absolutely packed with jokes and cleverness. It’s like reading an entire novel of one liners. I can only imagine the immense effort this must have taken. Here for example is her taking up buying self help books:
I would open one and put a flower on top of it, then take a picture and imagine changing everything about my personality and core friendship group to allow myself to post that image online.
Or at one of many efforts to have hobbies or interests – at a gaming arcade:
. . . I watched a group of twentysomething girls cheering while one of their friends whacked a pinball machine. They were having a level of fun I’d never seen outside of a commercial for a chain restaurant.
I have read three novels recently about women and breakups and I am delighted once again to have not grown up in the developed world. I’m not saying I feel amazing about my body, but I just can’t get over how much women from developed countries seem to worry about how they look. Truly I wonder if it is patriarchy at work – how much mental real estate is being used on Spanx rather than on seizing the means of production.