We finally come to the book that made me go back to the library. This book was posted on their Instagram page and it got me thinking about how much I missed reading, but it was definitely popular and I had to wait a few weeks before I could take it out as it was already on loan. I had no idea what it was about but it had good reviews and I liked the title, so good enough right?
"You have to go limp and let it happen,' she said softly. 'You can't fight it, or you'll break every bone in your body."
It started off talking about the break-up between Maggie and Jon, a short lived marriage ending in a divorce and all that entails from a female perspective. Having just ended an engagement 12 months ago, and going through the fallout, it did hit a little close to home but also it was nice to read that I wasn't the only one be it fiction or not that took a long time to recover from it, emotionally and in terms of getting my life together. The weirdest part was when I got about half way through the book and a 'Team Bride' temporary tattoo fell out of the book. Now I'm as woo-woo as they come but even that was a little spooky for me .....
There was the general parts you would imagine of a breakup plus some unexpected twists, therapists, parties, men, all very well documented and the writing style is so descriptive it borders on 'get to the point' sometimes but overall an enjoyable read.
The characters are great, perhaps sometimes hard to follow along with all of the friends but they did drop some great wisdom in there. One of my favourite lines was "Sometimes sweet things become bitter" and it really hit home. Not just relationships but also friendships, family, work, client relations, lots of things start out nice and eventually end badly. Merris was a particularly wise 70'something year old character who provided endless chunks of well thought out advice.
"One day,' she said, 'and it will surprise you how soon this day will come, but one day you will wake up and feel good. It won't last long, but then you'll have another day where you barely remember this abjection, and another, and another, until that's just your life. But for now, it will be hard. This is the part that's hard." - and from personal experience, she is very very right. Unfortunately for a lot of us, it only creeps back in when you try and decide to be happy or 'put yourself out there' again, so I pre-warn you on that.
An epiphany that Maggie had circa p.118 had the same sort of effect and stuck in my head: 'I didn't know exactly what the plan was; all I knew at this stage was that staying occupied meant staying distracted and therefore something close to happy.'
There is a point in the book where she decides to try out many different hobbies and attributes this to all adults that start a hobby being unhappy and trying to escape from something, and as someone with multiple hobbies I have to disagree with this from my own experience and those around me. I do understand what she is saying about how they get started but personally I think it's just nice to do something that makes you happy with no ulterior motive.
Merris comes back in again with a golden nugget on p.200: "Please. I don't mean your moon rocks or whatever you've done that got oil all over everything down here. That's fine; so is the messaging. But at a certain point it becomes running, when most of moving on is just getting out of bed and plodding forward. Call it what you must, but you need to practice walking around and living life and being heartbroken at the same time."
In general it was a good book and a very accurate depiction of what it feels like to leave a committed relationship before you turn 30, as that somehow seems to make it all the better when you do turn 30 and decide to turn your life around (again). I did think the end of the book could have finished a chapter or two sooner and that it could have been rounded up a little faster seeing as we all basically knew the ending, but alas I repeat, an enjoyable read.
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