i hate men as much as the next literate 20-something woman, but at one point does "the patriarchy is the third member of every heterosexual marriage" become "you married a mean child."

you can tell from page 18 that this guy is a no go, so it cuts down the power of that a bit.

this is the kind of book i really like (depressing and miserable and cutting lit fic about modern society), but i didn't like how it was done. this artist-cum-mother/wife becomes increasingly mother/wife and also maid and also secretary in a cartoonishly unequal relationship with a guy with no redeeming qualities. but that's not even what we're supposed to be reading? our narrator constantly tells us that she loves her husband and the hardest thing about her life is that she misses him and wishes she could be near him all the time, but we never see that. just shouting and liberal usage of the word "meltdown."

i think the intention here is to show how these two totally contradictory feelings can, and possibly have to, coexist in marriage...but it doesn't do that, so.

by the end, it dissolves into a series of platitudes looking for a conclusion it doesn't quite find.

but i read it in a sitting so i guess take this with a grain of salt.

bottom line: an eminently readable but otherwise just okay book.

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tbr review

can't stop reading lit fic about motherhood. help

(thank you to the publisher for the e-arc)