Oh my goodness... how to rate this book?
'Still Life with Husband' is Emily's story. She's a thirtysomething freelance journalist with a job she likes, a nice home, good friends, and a husband who loves her completely. What's wrong with all that? She gets bored. She gets stressed by the thought of living in the suburbs. She is irritated by her husband's requests that she consider having the child they'd agreed that both wanted.
So what does she do? She starts an affair with a slightly younger, slightly 'edgier' photographer. And slowly throws her life away.
First, let me say that this book hooked me at the library. I picked it up and giggled my way through the first couple of chapters. Emily talks and thinks (at that point) much like I do with my friends. So I took it home, read the rest... and by the end would have cheerfully slapped her face right off of her head. After starting a hitman fund for her husband. Before helping him hide the body.
The woman who was funny and slightly cynical at the beginning is revealed to have depths of self-centeredness and self-interest that truly shocked me. I don't want to give away too much here, but suffice to say that I was upset about this book for a few days--hell, it makes me mad thinking about it right now.
...And there's the rub. Despite my intense NEED to trash this book, neither it nor Fox deserves that. For her to create a character that I hate with the burning passion that I hate Emily... well, that takes TALENT. I haven't hated a character like this since 'The Great Santini' (Pat Conroy), and I read a LOT of books.
Being fair, Lauren Fox is a fine writer. Her characters are true, in the finest sense of the word. How tempting must it have been to have Emily's character redeemed at the end, how easy and reader-satisfying? I admire Fox so much for not doing that. Emily is at the end as she was in the beginning. People don't change much, after all. The dialogue in this book is just spot on, an evocation of the way real women speak (at least in my world). And each situation, every damned one, is plausible.
I still don't like this book, but it isn't because of the writing. If you can admire that without getting personally involved with the characters (and I couldn't manage that), this really is a lovely, well-written book.
Which I intend on forgetting as soon as I can. Two coffee cups out of five.
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