Wow, people are really divided on this book, aren’t they? It’s like “5 stars amazing best thing ever” and “1 star this is drivel did no one tell the author that blood sausages weren’t sold during WW2?” and literally nothing in between. I find myself not quite in between–the dreaded three star, I don’t really have an opinion, but here are 500 words on this book anyway–but this was definitely a book that a) grew on me and b) washed over me.
One thing I enjoyed, as someone who recently left a marriage, is how Groff didn’t default to the classic “bad marriage” tropes–Mathilde and Lotto were unhappy! They cheated on one another/lied to one another/were unhappy with one another/were sexually unsatisfied with one another/blah blah blah! Those are some pretty tired stories, and we’re seen them time and time again. True, they have their secrets (and they jump into marriage under some pretty thin pretenses) but underneath it all they have a connection that they try to maintain and do actually maintain for the vast majority of their lives together.
Also, quote my friend when asked recently whether she liked the movie Marriage Story: I’m tired of the “troubled marriage of two high SES white people told by man” movie genre
That being said, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to finding Lotto’s side of the story a bit drab in comparison to Mathilde’s. She is more interesting, no? I find myself utterly unperturbed by some logical inconsistencies in her story (the aforementioned blood sausage bit that seems to have everyone up in arms) but enthralled by her overall life trajectory. The way she purposefully moves through life, catching waves and paying for the choices that she’s made as a child–I suppose at the end of the day I’m actually not certain what exactly it is that draws me into her story, but I couldn’t put the book down from ~60% until the end.
