I saw this on a few Best Of lists last year and was semi intrigued, and then a friend of mine posted about hating it and a few people chimed in, and then I was even more intrigued, and checked out the audiobook. And to my surprise, I found it extremely interesting! It reads like a Nick Hornby novel — guy gets dumped, is miserable about it, tries to figure his life out, etc. But rather than demanding that you fully sympathize and identify with this sort of obnoxious and vaguely misogynistic protagonist, the novel gives you some space to reflect on him and his worldview more critically in a really low-key and nuanced way.
The clearest way this happens is through the subtle but persistent examination of how people are constrained by gender roles — specifically, how this apparently reasonably sensitive and articulate guy seems bogged down in a model of masculinity that prevents him from having the kinds of meaningful interactions with male friends that he clearly longs for. Over and over he finds that he simply cannot talk to his male friends about his feelings — and even if he manages to try, they seem incapable of responding. Without giving too much away, the turn at the end of the novel zooms in on this idea far more clearly, pondering how normative gendered life scripts shape people’s choices. It’s really smart and well done. And it made me want to go back and reread the whole book to more clearly track the various ways that the flaws of all of the characters are illuminated but also recognized as a fact of human life. No one is perfect. Everybody is a little self-absorbed and weird, and so we make various compromises (or don’t) for the sake of existing in the world together.
And then the more obvious thing, I guess, is that I really liked the various metaphors for relationships, and what is lost when they end. As a world; as a space; as the person you are in one; as a subculture. The novel captures just perfectly the surprise of realizing that there are conversations that you can have with an ex that you couldn’t have had when you were a couple, though it’s hard to explain why (shouldn’t it have been easier, then?). And a special kind of closeness and comfort you can have with each other — a way you can accept them for who they are, precisely because you know that you aren’t going to date them any more and therefore won’t actually have to deal with their bullshit, so it can more easily roll off your back.
I dunno. Maybe it’s because I went into it with somewhat low expectations, but two weeks after I’ve finished the novel, I’m just more and more impressed by it.
Kasia Reads 