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“Adults deal in moral ambiguity. Never hurting people or getting hurt is impossible if you’re living an honest life.��

This is a challenging book to review. Not because it was difficult to read. Mainly because my enjoyment of it had more to do with how I approached it than anything else. If I look at it from the standpoint of a novel (which it is), I’d expect some excellent character development and a compelling story arc. Personally, I couldn’t claim this to excel on those merits alone. Instead, I approached this as what I like to call an “ideas�� book, much like I did Rachel Cusk’s Outline. Don’t get me wrong, however. I’m not comparing Cusk with Ada Calhoun. Come to think of it, Miranda July’s book All Fours comes to mind as well. July and Calhoun are both dealing with middle-aged, married women that balance thriving careers with motherhood. The marriages are pretty successful, at least as far as these women can tell when compared to how they view other marriages. Both novels examine what happens when these women explore their needs and desires. July’s book did it better, but this one was pretty damn interesting to me as well. The narrator’s friend best encapsulates the question at the heart of this novel:

“You have to ask: If this was my last year alive, how would I want to spend it? If I had thirty years? If you’re saying ‘Things are good enough �� why should I blow them up?�� The answer is because ‘good enough�� should not be the goal,�� she said. “We didn’t work this hard�� �� by “we�� I sensed she meant women �� “to be fine.��

This is a first-person narrative and the voice of the protagonist kept me well engaged. You might find this a bit pretentious, as she throws around quotes from other writers and philosophers like your local Rotary Club throws candy at parade-goers. They just keep coming. Yet, I found myself highlighting the hell out of this. Marilynn Robinson, Michel de Montaigne, Graham Greene, Rabindranath Tagore, and Ortega y Gasset were a just a few of those I flagged in my copy (Robinson and Greene being the only ones I’ve personally read). Sometimes, while being clever, she also made me smile a bit.

“I wanted to send word to my generational cohort: Don’t we make our own cages? When we rattle the bars don’t we often find that they are made of cardboard? That we’ve cut them out for ourselves with X-ACTO knives? Look! We are free! We have nothing to lose but our PTA membership!��

What happens when you find that deep connection? What do you do about a marriage that is plodding along ‘just fine��? Our narrator tries to answer those questions. What she concludes, well, you’d have to read this to find out. In the meantime, I’m super curious about Calhoun’s non-fiction work.

“So what does a true happy ending look like? I think it’s always a surprise.��