By Megan Thomas
It’s really good, actually. (Look at me, refusing to resist my inner #DadJokes).
My friend was reading this while we were on holiday… cackling from the poolside. I was very envious, reading my slightly abstract book about Pyrenees mountain folklore. It was excellent, but I wasn’t cackling from the poolside. Graciously, and totally unlike something I’d ever do because I treat my books like prized trophies, she sent me home with it.
I proceeded to spend the next two days completely ignoring everyone, and cackling a lot. Despite having never gone through a divorce or even a terrible breakup like the protagonist, it was achingly relatable – and not just because her name is Maggie, one letter off from the big time. I saw myself (or rather, my potential) in every obsessive thought, every spiral of self doubt, every irrational (and sometimes rational) action. You would think Maggie would be hateable, given the chaos that ensues in the year after her marriage ends, but I think her grounding in reality prevents the reader from disliking her. Did I feel pity? Plenty. Distress? Yip. Exhaustion? Big time. But no hate.
In some ways, it’s a pretty sad book – Maggie is having a bloody horrible time but also slowly alienating herself from her friends as they start to distance themselves from her self-indulgent and self-destructive misery. They have their own problems, which Maggie knows nothing about, because she (relatably, understandably) can’t see how anything can matter compared to her own inner turmoil. AND YET. The humour is perfect. It is so funny. Tragic comedy, perhaps, or just an underlying acknowledgement that as hard and valid as this experience is for Maggie, her problems are superficial in the long run.
You do reach a point where you, like Maggie’s friends, aren’t sure how much longer you can put up with the whinging which, in my opinion, is completely intentional. But with that in mind, I’d recommend you read it the way I did – hungrily, quickly, all at once.
There are books I recommend specifically with the reader in mind (for instance, the one I was not cackling at by the pool), and then books like this that I think it would be impossible for anyone to dislike, even if they don’t feel like I do, which is that Monica Heisey has somehow stolen a piece of my brain and fed it to AI to write a book just for me (that’s how AI works).
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