Sam is a woman my age who makes an impulse buy – a house. An adorable old house in the middle of Syracuse; she will live there alone. I.e., she will leave her husband. For the house. For the chance to live in this lovable house alone.
Intrigued by this appealing dream-I-will-never-actually-live, I picked up this novel eagerly, but was disappointed. Sam is just so unlikeable. I mean, I’m unlikeable too, but she is super vitriolic, self-pitying, and self-aware only to the extent that she realizes she’s self-pitying and it makes her more self-pitying. C’mon, I’m not THIS bad, am I?
Also, it turned out to be heavy on the mother-daughter stuff that doesn’t interest me.
My weird predilections aside, being as objective as I can be, I think the book really does suffer from its central character’s unlikability, and weird digressive way of wrapping things up. Thumbs down.
Tytania 