Book Review: The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship by Lisa Verge Higgins

This is the second book that I’ve read for the College Prepster’s new book club and I enjoyed it even more than I did the first one! I read it as soon as CP announced it as her next choice but that was a while ago and now I’m having to rely on weeks old notes and turned down corners to write this review. I just hope I do the book justice.

When my brother saw the book lying on my couch he picked it up, turned it over and proclaimed that it looked like an “improving” book.

My brother was half right. TPCMOF (as Carly nicknamed it in her own review) is definitely a story, and in places not a terribly realistic one at that (I mean realistic in the way in which it makes you live the plot too, see my sidebar for a better explanation). It does feel a bit like it has a sheen over it, like it’s a little glossy and movie-like. The characters, too, sometimes feel a little contrived. However, the plot also contains some important reminders and messages about how we should go about living our lives. Thus, in some ways I suppose that it is an improving book, just not in the self-help kind of way that my brother was envisioning.

I think that the book had two crucial messages that appealed to me. The first of these is that even things that you love and that you are good at and that you put your whole heart and soul into (for instance, in the case of one of the main characters Kate, being a stay-at-home-mom) can become tiresome and depressing when it starts to feel as though there is nothing more to you than this aspect. We need to live and explore and adventure and force ourselves out of our comfort zone from time to time, even if for no other reason than to more fully appreciate what we already have.

Habits and schedules and routines can be the best tools for an easy life but they can also be dangerous things when it comes to relationships. As the author herself puts it: “even the truest of loves [needs] tending.” (Page 276) I felt it was really important that even on her life-affirming trip AWAY from her husband and kids, a trip designed precisely to escape her life as a stay-at-home-mom; Kate remains faithful to her husband in both her thoughts and her deeds. For all of her dissatisfaction she’s not actually unhappy with her life or her choices, she just needs a little tending to and so does her marriage.

The second message that really resonated with me was this—the past is not the present. The past can be hugely helpful in guiding our choices in the present, it can keep us from making the same mistakes and help us recognize good things when we see them but when our past fully dictates our present choices or distorts what is right in front of us then it is neither helpful nor welcome. We can see the past interfering unhelpfully in the decisions and perceptions of each of the main characters during the course of the book- Colin is not the person he used to be when Sarah first knew him (and perhaps never really was that man), Kate’s fixation with her husband of earlier years is neither fair (for she is not the same person she was when they first met either) nor beneficial to their relationship and Jo’s own unpleasant childhood and experience of motherhood does not mean that she is somehow fundamentally incapable of providing a wonderful childhood to Grace.

If this book were a movie then I imagine its tagline would be something like: “Sometimes you have to do something totally uncharacteristic to find out who you really are.” Yet, one of the truly beautiful things about this book is that not only do the main characters begin to understand themselves just a little bit better but they come to learn more about each other too.  For instance, Jo, who has always mocked Kate for being just a stay-at-home-mom, comes to understand exactly how hard her friend’s daily life can be when she is suddenly and somewhat unwillingly forced into the same position and has to depend upon Kate’s advice to get by, whilst Kate develops a whole new level of respect for the work and life of Sarah.

The characters might seem quite contrived and less than fully realistic in parts of the book (they are, after all, intended to be something of stereotypes to help demonstrate the author’s points) but that does not make this book any less emotional. The reader finds herself, with a certain amount of shock, really rooting for Colin and Sarah to get it together (at least at first) even though this would necessarily mean that Colin would be cheating on his fiancée, something we could not ordinarily abide by.  Our hearts also ache when we realize that Kate has completely misjudged her husband’s feelings and that he is not going to instantly forgive her for essentially running away, even though in his position we probably wouldn’t either. The characters might not be totally, completely, 100% realistic but they do win us- and our emotions- over and we do become fully invested in their lives. As far as I’m concerned, that’s pretty much what a novel should do!

Now, hop on over to CP’s post and read her own and other book club members’ reviews of the book. Next up is ‘Names My Sisters Call Me’ by Megan Crane.

Quote from: Lisa Verge Higgins (2011) The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship (NY, NY: 5 Spot), p. 276

For those of you who have read David Baldacci's 'Hell's Corner'.... this is Hell's Corner aka Lafayette Square!

Book Review: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond

This is an absolutely precious book, and it is only made all the more spine-tinglingly wonderful by the fact that it is a memoir and not fiction. It is the stuff of fairy tales (albeit with a decent hunk of trauma and misfortune the likes of which not often featured by Disney); in many ways it is the perfect love story. The fact that the author and her husband are still very much together and in love many years, four children and surely several more traumas later makes the whole thing even better. If there’s one way to describe this book it’s as a great big dab of hope for all the romantically cynical.

At several points Drummond sarcastically jokes that it must have been her eloquence (p. 21 “You know, stuff, and Me, too, all in the same conversation. This guy was sure to be floored by my eloquence.”) that had her Wrangler clad cowboy so smitten and, it has to be said, her writing style does seem to lack a certain eloquence in places. It is written very much in the kind of colloquial conversational style that Drummond blogs in, and though it works very well in the short intimate posts of a blog there are times when it is somewhat less endearing in a full length memoir.  On the other hand, this style does rather mirror her own adorable tongue twistedness in the early stages of her Western romance and as the relationship becomes more established and settles down a little, so too does the writing style.

It certainly doesn’t stop her from making the characters feel ever so real and loveable, to the extent that the reader feels totally invested in the course of their lives. From the get-go we find ourselves rooting for the oh-so-gentlemanly Malboro man versus the distant Californian surfer J and we cringe wholeheartedly along with Ree as she falls over her own feet on her first date. Not to mention the sympathy we feel when she attempts to pick out suitable attire from her L.A. wardrobe for an early morning ranch work party at which she will meet her beau’s parents for the first time. The horror that grips us when she promptly manages to drive her car- containing both herself and her future mother-in-law- into a ditch is all consuming. And please let’s not mention the sweating in the guest bathroom incident….. I’m still recovering from the embarrassment so goodness only knows how Drummond herself found the strength to continue with life without changing her identity and moving to the North Pole!

The whole book is wonderfully charming, from the sweetly family-friendly way she dances around describing the more intimate aspects of her relationship to the way she manages to make making-out in the back of a pickup sound ever so classy and sophisticated! The fact that her crazy, instinctive decision to cancel her planned move to Chicago solely due to a weeks old relationship with a cowboy (normally the kind of decision that, however right, really only makes sense to the person in question) clearly demonstrates the impressive way that Drummond builds up a relationship between herself and the reader.

This might not be the most highbrow read (nor, indeed, is it meant to be) but it is a fun, sweet, loving and most satisfying story. It is the perfect book to read in a quiet, sleepy house before anyone but the dog has woken up…. whilst eating leftover chocolate mousse birthday cake for breakfast. I can personally attest to this.