Y’all, I tried! I firmly fell into the ‘didn’t love it’ camp of this polarizing novel. I appreciated it for being one of those weird books that goes off the rails while having some really profound moments that speak to a certain group of people. Ostensibly, I should fit into that group of middle aged women. I heard the author, I just didn’t feel like she was speaking to me.

I understand she was trying to write about the all-encompassing exhaustion of motherhood, how people change throughout the course of a marriage, and how we put ourselves into boxes. But the pace felt haphazard, going from monotonous navel gazing to small bursts of WTF action.  The highly sexualized content (not sexy, IMO, despite the blurb) seems to be the turn-off for most dissenters, but didn’t bother me at all. I just was never emotionally invested, maybe because the things that gave the main character so much angst didn’t resonate or jive with the broader commentary on modern marriage and motherhood. I felt like she was worrying so much about being desirable, what other people are doing in their lives, or being perceived by others. Not in a “keeping up with the Joneses” kind of way, but just being way too invested in other‘s minutiae rather than her own.

Give me a midlife crisis novel that goes in unexpected directions, for sure. And I do love a weird novel. But I think my flavor of weird is more Melissa Broder or Carmen Maria Machado than Miranda July.