kitsqueak28

It took me a long time to get into this book. But this is one of those books that gets better once you push through the kind of slow first half. Oh, and yeah, you also have to be prepared for a lot of description in painful slow motion of people sitting, getting up, standing, and yes, eating. For someone who cares very little for food, this was excruciating, like watching a video at-0.50 speed. Anyhow, I started liking it more towards the middle, when Piglet stopped sounding like your everyday trad wife and started getting a personality of her own. Not that there's much personality - none of the character were really nice or likeable, least of all the two at the heart of the story. I'm not sure what made me want t6o push through, but in the end, I found this to be quite a telling commentary on a few things: eating and food as performance; the pressure of a good wedding ceremony, the expectations of a marriage's success or failure all hinging on that one day, the expense and pomp and show on a ceremony that is meant for two people in love but is somehow not about them at all. Many thoughts like these struck me. By the end, I wanted to tell Piglet that being single isn't so bad after all. Anyway, it's a decent book, and it's even more delicious to read when you're feeling hungry yourself.

I didn't quite understand this book in the first half, but in the end I cried. It did the job beautifully.

Real and raw and rebellious and absolutely dizzyingly gutsy. I loved this book and cried for the girls and their friendship. Anyone who's ever had a friendship that spilled over into pure love will revel in this story. Andrea is a powerful writer and I'm keen to read more of her writing.

My review is just based on three points:
1) The main character reminded me of someone from my own life who is (sometimes hilariously) miserable and constantly dissatisfied with everything, and the deadpan narration from her POV added to the dissociation the character feels on a day-to-day basis. I'm sure someone in the throes of depression will relate to it.
2) Jillian herself is a fairly touching portrayal of a single woman just trying to get by, with a dead-end job and a young child to care for in a difficult, unhelpful society. I think more people will relate to Jillian than not.
3) Have you ever seen something so ugly and terrible that you can't tear your eyes away from and just want to keep watching it to the end to see how it unfolds? That's what the experience of reading this book is.
I will admit it gave me pause for thought. The realisation that many people operate like Megan, on auto-pilot. That many people have a dampened, deadened inner narration. That many people struggle to make sense of the world. It also gave me ideas for my own writing.
I will definitely be reading more Halle Butler again.

I like this author in general, and follow the SoL videos. I picked this up (at an airport, no less) to see if this cool thinker had the s me thoughts on flights as I do. It was alright - quite a nice set of thoughts. I've often has the same kind of thoughts when present in airports. The photos accompayning it were underwhelming or maybe my edition with its basic paper quality made it look so. I feel like in this world of reels there are far better travel musings to read and pictures to look at.