On the Canada Reads longlist, and billed as a “Quebecois Bridget Jones’s Diary”, I had high hopes for this book, and proposed it as a read to my book club. Unfortunately, it didn’t really land for us. 

Autopsy of a Boring Wife follows Diane after her husband leaves her, citing he was “bored”, and had been having an affair with a younger woman. With her children grown and gone, and on her own, Diane falls apart, barely holding it together.

Diane goes through many of the oldest cliches of the post-breakup trope: wild lifestyle changes (dying hair, taking up running), taking a LITERAL sledgehammer to furniture and the house (repeatedly), and drinking white wine with friends. A book with “autopsy” in the title should be expected to be full of introspection into what went wrong, what could have been done differently, and strong character growth. However, while Diane does go to therapy, and could be said to make some modest improvements, she figures she’s done once she decides to cut her hair and get it dyed grey, and there aren’t that many other introspective scenes.

While there were some funny parts, overall the book wasn’t that great. Diane doesn’t seem to undergo very much character growth, many of the scenes seemed cliched, and not many of the characters seemed that likable, if we got to know them well enough to make that assertion at all. Although there are 2 more books in the series, I would still expect a book to stand on its own. 

However, as this book is about a woman in a much different stage of life than I, I do wonder if that is part of why I couldn’t connect all that well. But it wasn’t any easier to connect with the other younger characters either, like her kids. They just seem to flit in and out of her story. And the friend’s teenagers were every millenial/Gen Z/teenager trope in the book. 

I think I’d give this one a pass. There are so many great books about aging and divorce (Il pleuvait les oiseaux/And the Birds Rained Down by Jocelyne Saucier being one of my favourites), it might be best to just reach for one of those.