Spoiler alert: go buy this book.
Yeah, I know. I shouldn't have told you that already. I should have made you read through the entire review, built some suspense, then saved the payoff for the end. But, as anyone who knew me in college would probably tell you, I tend to give it away a little early.
Sorry, mom.
But, really. This book was perfectly amazing in every way and that's exactly what I expected. I DEVOURED Maria Semple's Where'd You Go Bernadette and was anxiously awaiting her next book (what takes authors so long anyway, sheesh! Don't they know we're waiting?)
A bit about the author, if I may. Of course, I would love her. SHE USED TO WRITE FOR BEVERLY HILLS, 9010! The original, not that abomination they tried to roll out a few years ago. She wrote for Mad About You, too, so you know she's smart and witty and generally amazing (I don't know if she wrote the classic "Donna Martin Graduates" episode of 90210, but let's pretend she did. I mean, that script belongs in the Smithsonian.)
Why does that writing experience matter? She writes a novel like a script. It's quick, the dialogue is fantastic and it MOVES. That's probably why I ripped through this thing in 150-page chunks, despite having an exhausting week at work through which I would have preferred to sleepwalk.
So.. premise..
Eleanor is in crisis. Of the mid-life variety. She believes that the best of her life is behind her. And, hence the title, she's willing herself to strap on a smile as she faces another day in stay-at-home-mom Seattle.
The story begins through the eyes of a mom without purpose. Scratch that. She has purpose, but doesn't particularly like it. She's given up life and career in NYC for life and motherhood in Seattle. Surrounded by women who fill the days between school dropoff and pickup at coffee shops, Nordstrom and barre workouts, life should be pretty damn easy. But, you hear it in her voice; it's not for her.
A random phone call and the placement of a telescope send her on a spiral of suspicion and picks up our plot.
Eleanor is like me, in that I find it hard to enjoy happiness at the moment without always bracing for the collapse. I credit my Irish-Catholic DNA and a belief that worrying is hereditary (thanks, mom), but I always fear the worst. In Eleanor, that worry manifests itself in her marriage. When speaking of her husband, a renowned hand surgeon responsible for the health of the Seattle Seahawks), she speaks of his perfection as if it's somehow a flaw. A flaw of hers that she's not worthy of him, or of their son. She confesses that she'd been making a list of what she doesn't like about him, in the event he leaves her; then, maybe she won't be quite as sad. She started making the list the morning after they said I love you for the first time.
It's hard to enjoy the high when you're always looking over your shoulder for gravity to pull you back down.
Her reflections on life and motherhood and the pressure to be perfect hit you in waves. She remembers simple moments with her husband and her son as bringing joy. "That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments in between." Nailed it.
"I'm happy in retrospect," she says. And, we all nod. Emphatically.
The bulk of the plot takes place over a single day in Seattle. We watch her best intentions fall away with each inconvenience of daily life. We also see flashbacks to Eleanor's life to construct the edges of the puzzle. It's a grand, dramatic childhood; the woman as a grown-up fills in the picture.
Now that I write it, it sounds heavy. It really isn't. I mean, maybe the themes are, but the book feels light and whimsical. The writing is clean and crisp (like all that Kelly-Dylan-Brenda dialogue she must have written for intense third-act scenes at the Peach Pit.) Seattle itself is a character, complete with the drab Key Arena and a cameo by a gum-chewing Pete Carroll.
True to form, Eleanor imagines the worst - that she's been so inattentive to her husband that he's left her for the new car smell of another woman. But, when she finds where he's really gone, it is far more mysterious - and, upsetting to her - than a simple affair. She believes the best of her life has passed; she can't imagine the best of his is just beginning.
I love this book. It's a story of husbands and wives, mothers and sons and - at its heart - a story of sisters. I raced to finish, then didn't want it to end.
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