disinclined's Full Review: Lucinda Rosenfeld - I'm So Happy for You: A Novel
Sometimes I wish I could go back into the past - weeks or months or however far back it takes to figure out when and why I requested a certain book from the library. Or, to put it another way, “who I can blame for convincing me to waste my time on a completely worthless book.” Whoever wrote that persuasively positive review of I’m So Happy For You had better watch out – you’ll be hearing from my time-travel lawyers.
This is a chick-fiction novel, which I don’t read as often as I used to, and maybe that’s part of the problem – it could be that my tolerance for hastily sketched, comically oversimplified characters and mind-bendingly improbable plot twists has deteriorated. But here’s the set-up: Wendy and Daphne are old college friends, now in their thirties. The dynamic of their friendship has always been that Wendy is the dependable, dutiful grownup, while Daphne is the glamorous, charmingly irresponsible screw-up; as the story opens, Daphne has just placed yet another tearful late-night faux-suicide-threat call to Wendy because of her heartbreak over her married cad of a lover (see?). Wendy – an unmotivated editorial assistant married to an emotionally checked-out slacker, with whom she is trying furiously and unsuccessfully to get pregnant – smugly enjoys the adult trappings of her life and vicariously thrills to Daphne’s misadventures. But when Daphne embarks on a whirlwind romance and marriage with a rich and handsome man, moves into a palatial home, and gets pregnant almost immediately, Wendy’s head explodes. Can their friendship survive their sudden reversal of fortunes? Or will Wendy be forced to confront some ugly truths about herself and her supposedly closest friend?
Few things are as fun as a really love-to-hate-her antiheroine, and I was preparing to settle in for some wickedly gleeful schadenfreude, but... Wendy is just awful. She’s simply unbearable, with no redeeming qualities, and therefore completely unbelievable, which ruins all the enjoyment. Selfish, petty, narcissistic, smug, mean-spirited, shallow, and vicious, Wendy is borderline sociopathic – especially when she starts to unravel scarily in the final act – and the humor is cheap and cruel. The author’s sympathies are clearly with Daphne, judging by the way she plays fairy godmother in lavishly bestowing one happy chick-fiction ending after another upon her, but an unearned payoff is no fun, either.
Much may be forgiven of a well-written novel, but sadly, So Happy fails here, too. Besides the aforementioned plot and pacing issues, it’s just clumsily, heavy-handedly written; the author is constantly stepping in to point out the delicious ironies she’s dreamed up, often going so far as to summarize characters’ internal conflicts in play-by-play commentary. By the end, I couldn’t even muster any interest in what happened to anyone, because none of it struck me as genuine or even amusing.
I still can’t believe anyone thought this was a “dark, hilarious, and painfully accurate view of the less-than-pure reasons why women stay friends,” as Publishers Weekly claims. I can’t believe the New Yorker even bothered to review it! At least I can take comfort knowing that there are plenty of others in the S.S. We’ll Never Get Those Hours Back Again. Learn from our mistakes and don’t waste your time on this one.
Wendy s best friend, Daphne, has always been dependably prone to catastrophe. And Wendy has always been there to help. But when Daphne suddenly starts...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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