Tom Perrotta

i completely understand the section of people who hate open endings of this magnitude but i just eat them up every time. i LOVE and live for the gaps authors leave for me to sit around and think about what they could be filled with. i love the acceptance that i'll never know for sure. i read this after watching the show, so it was fascinating to see the changes the showrunners made from the original story and especially what they ended up leaving behind altogether (justice for jill's shaved head and the GR members at the outpost who fell in love). meg and laurie's storyline had so much life here, i got the time with jill and tom that i desperately wanted, and everyone was just so real. they're messy and fucked up and make the wrong decisions and act out in pain/anger and there aren't resolutions and they don't have time to fix mistakes and they're just dragging themselves through every day full of grief and confusion and i just love them for it!!!!!!!!!!… (mais)

I mostly enjoyed this story about a middle aged single Mom dealing with her empty nest. Like other Tom Perotta books it has a dark, depressing vibe to it although ultimately it's not a super dark book even though it tackles the dark underbelly of loneliness.

It spends a lot of time exploring sexual relationships, gender, sexual fantasy and experimentation and how that differs among people of different generations. That was all interesting to me but might put off some people if they aren't expecting a lot of discussion about porn in their casual reading.

Probably closer to a 4 so really 3.5… (mais)