Thursdays in the Park

Oh dearie me, so chick lit has become such a huge genre that now we've moved on and writers have decided it's now time for granny lit or as mommy porn becomes more popular this writer has been heralded the inventor of granny porn.

This book was the story of Jeanie, a 59 year old woman who finds herself and her husband growing apart both physically and emotionally. Left on their own with very different ideas of how to spend their ‘twilight years' Jeanie finds herself falling in love with Ray, a man she meets in the local park. Suddenly she finds herself thinking of throwing away over 30 years of marriage for ask she has only just met.

I read about this book,many people declared it wonderful and a real joy of a debut. I didn't find it so enticing. Regardless of the age it was written about and in a way for it just lacked any real substance to the central romance. The relationship between Jeanie and Ray seems quite flimsily written, he features in relatively little of the book. He disappears about two thirds in and isn't really central to the plot line for much of the book. Instead Boyd focuses upon the demise of Jeanie's marriage which is actually quite tedious reading.

I found Jeanie a little full at points, I didn't like her initial feelings that it seemed okay because her husband was withdrawn from her bed that it made her okay to be seeing someone else behind his back. Then again her husband George comes across as quite an odious character. It just seemed to be a whole lot of wrangling over whether she and George would or wouldn't move to the country and whether Jeanie would sell her beloved shop.

It didn't build for me a relationship that I could see her throwing away 30 years of marriage on and as a result I didn't really find I enjoyed this book as much as I'd hoped. I skimmed much of the end as I got bored and just didn't care much how it ended. This was not a reflection on the age of the characters but on the writing of their story treating them as being unable to have a conversation not hidden behind social niceties.

Disappointing

If you get nothing else from this book. Think about this quote from the main character's Aunt Norma:
“Sixty is heaven,” she had told Jeanie as they sat having tea.”The world is done with you, you become to all intents and purposes invisible, particularly if you are a woman. There's childhood, then adult conformity—work, family, responsibility—then just when everyone assumes it's all over and you're on the scrap heap of old age, freedom! You can finally be who you are, not what society wants you to be, not who you think you ought to be.”