State of the Union

★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
—

[Louise says,] “Underneath it all, I love you.”

“Underneath it all.”

“Yes.”

“Great.”

“To be honest, I think you should be happy with that. You're lucky there's anything still there.”

and

“How are new starts possible?” Louise says. “When you've been together for a long time, and you have kids, and you've spent years and years being irritated by the other person? But if they stop being irritating, they're not them anymore.”

“My text was me not being me.”

“Exactly.”

They walk to the door.

“So I've got to stay as me.”

“Yes.”

“While at the same time being different, somehow.”

“It's a conundrum.”

Note: I won a copy of this from Riverhead Books via Goodreads – and I thank them both for that. But my library got me a copy first, so I haven't read it yet. But it will be the copy I re-read (and I think I'll be doing that a lot).