Mommy Brain

Good Grief by Lolly Winston was one of my favorite finds of 2006. I picked it up at Barnes & Noble around this time last year (on our annual weekend away without the kids, which we just happen to be taking again this weekend — woo hoo!), and devoured it, then passed it on to my sister Andrea, who also loved it, and my friend, Michelle. She enjoyed it, too.

So when I heard that Ms. Winston had another book out, I quickly purchased it and put it on my “to-be-read” shelf. I wish I hadn’t. This book was a huge disappointment.

First of all, it was much racier than Good Grief. Now, granted, the protagonist in Good Grief was newly widowed, and so didn’t have much opportunity for romantic liasons. But the characters in Happiness Sold Separately certainly do, and like to reminisce about said encounters with more detail than I want to know.

I know, I should have put the book down. But I really wanted to see how it ended - and in the back of my mind was the thought: ‘But her last book was so good!’

Happiness Sold Separately tells the story of Elinor and Ted Mackey. In Chapter One, Elinor discovers that Ted is having an affair with his fitness trainer, Gina. Their marriage was pretty much destroyed before the affair started - devastated by the inability to conceive and the stress of unsuccessful fertility treatments.

The rest of the book follows Elinor and Ted’s attempts at reconciliation and making sense of their lives. I don’t want to give away the plot in case any of you want to torture yourselves by actually reading this book, but I will say that in the end Elinor makes a choice that the author clearly sees as the right decision, but that denies what is right and true about marriage and love.

Ms. Winston is a gifted author, and this book is well-written. But it still isn’t worth reading, in my opinion. Thank goodness it was a quick read and I didn’t waste too many hours of precious reading time.