The Mum Who'd Had Enough

Oh dear, I think I am becoming more staid and judgmental as I get older - this book really annoyed the heck out of me.  Let's begin with Sinead's list, what a poxy set of excuses for walking away from your marriage; even worse poor Nate believes that they are all true and that everything is his fault.  In fact, we never get to really hear his side of things about the state of their marriage.  What we get is Nate trying to fix things by "working through" the list to become Sinead's idea of a perfect husband.  Yes, marriage isn't easy and it involves a great deal of compromise - something that Sinead seems to expect Nate to do but is not willing to bend on herself.

There is some humour in the book but I found this to be overridden by my active distaste for the basic idea and how unsympathetic a character Sinead is.  Every chapter from her perspective had me gritting my teeth as she launched in to another self-absorbed monologue about how hard it all was having left her husband and son.  Fortunately, Nate was more upbeat, even in his depression there was a whimsy about him that appealed - however, the selling of his record collection was a foolish move and I could have slapped him.

Also his best friend changes name throughout one chapter going from Paolo to Paulo and back to Paolo where he fortunately remained.  Not sure how that got missed by the proofreaders but it did and it annoys.

Normally Ms Gibson's female characters are flawed but fun.  In this case the only one who felt like this was Tanzie and even she was slightly off the mark somehow.  I'm not sure why but I found the whole book to be rather misogynistic with the women no more than caricatures rather than characters.

Not a great read but it struggled to a second star because of the relationship between Nate and his son and the way in which his disability is treated as just part of him and as something that shouldn't stop him in life.  Other than that I found very little to recommend this book.