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We're All Damaged by Matthew Norman
Zoom in on Andy as he’s marching the last few blocks of a misery parade: His wife left him, he lost his job, he ruined his best friend’s wedding and ended up fleeing to NYC. Now he needs to go back home because his grandfather is dying, and that means confronting his screwed-up life and family.
Okay, so this book? It’s a rom-com movie. Schlub of a guy meets a manic pixie dream girl, makeover happens, everyone is far too witty but is hiding secrets, there are over-the-top fake “villains” who never amount to much, disaster ensues at the ¾ mark, wacky plan is enacted to get everything back on track—and it fails but sorta-kinda also succeeds. Guy doesn’t get the girl but ends up happy anyway. Couldn’t be more formulaic if it tried.
For that matter, Andy’s ex-wife Karen is apparently an utter monster who…well, to say she doesn’t understand social conventions would be putting too much thought into her character, as she only appears once near the end of the book and otherwise appears only in flashbacks and third-person descriptions. She dumped Andy in an Applebees because she’d started screwing the guy across the street; Andy apparently moved out later that week. Less than two months later, after Andy has lost his job over all of this, Andy is the best man at Karen’s brother’s wedding…and she brings the new guy. The brother, Neal, apparently only found out about this two days earlier and didn’t want to tell Andy, which seems fair because he was in a very difficult position. A position Karen should NEVER have put him in because a) you don’t take your boy-toy to family events before your divorce is finalized and b) you NEVER bring an uninvited guest to a wedding. The brother’s response should have been, “Fuck no, this is my wedding, not your little drama show. We can meet your boyfriend after the honeymoon.”
But that didn’t happen, because Andy’s misery parade was more important to the author than Karen acting like a reasonable human being.
That said, the dialogue is genuinely witty. The idea that women might like Andy because he’s funny is actually entirely believable. There’s enough poignancy in several of the interactions (particularly Andy and his various relatives) to make me believe the author is talented enough to get actual emotions and snippets of real-life conflicted relationships onto the page. If you handed me a book this author co-wrote, and told me the plotting and story framework were written by the co-author and this guy did all the dialogue? I’d totally read it.
Oh, and I’m amused at exactly how starkly this framed itself in time: There’s a whole subplot about Andy’s mom, a conservative radio host, being courted by Fox News on the eve of the SCOTUS gay marriage decision. (And the “glitter mafia” coming after her. The author hedges on his sympathies, but it’s pretty clear he falls on the liberal spectrum of things and is going for a “the mom is a person, despite her terrible politics” approach.)
Overall: Did you like stupid rom-coms starring schlubby comedians and manic pixie dream girls? That’s what you’re getting here.
Okay, so this book? It’s a rom-com movie. Schlub of a guy meets a manic pixie dream girl, makeover happens, everyone is far too witty but is hiding secrets, there are over-the-top fake “villains” who never amount to much, disaster ensues at the ¾ mark, wacky plan is enacted to get everything back on track—and it fails but sorta-kinda also succeeds. Guy doesn’t get the girl but ends up happy anyway. Couldn’t be more formulaic if it tried.
For that matter, Andy’s ex-wife Karen is apparently an utter monster who…well, to say she doesn’t understand social conventions would be putting too much thought into her character, as she only appears once near the end of the book and otherwise appears only in flashbacks and third-person descriptions. She dumped Andy in an Applebees because she’d started screwing the guy across the street; Andy apparently moved out later that week. Less than two months later, after Andy has lost his job over all of this, Andy is the best man at Karen’s brother’s wedding…and she brings the new guy. The brother, Neal, apparently only found out about this two days earlier and didn’t want to tell Andy, which seems fair because he was in a very difficult position. A position Karen should NEVER have put him in because a) you don’t take your boy-toy to family events before your divorce is finalized and b) you NEVER bring an uninvited guest to a wedding. The brother’s response should have been, “Fuck no, this is my wedding, not your little drama show. We can meet your boyfriend after the honeymoon.”
But that didn’t happen, because Andy’s misery parade was more important to the author than Karen acting like a reasonable human being.
That said, the dialogue is genuinely witty. The idea that women might like Andy because he’s funny is actually entirely believable. There’s enough poignancy in several of the interactions (particularly Andy and his various relatives) to make me believe the author is talented enough to get actual emotions and snippets of real-life conflicted relationships onto the page. If you handed me a book this author co-wrote, and told me the plotting and story framework were written by the co-author and this guy did all the dialogue? I’d totally read it.
Oh, and I’m amused at exactly how starkly this framed itself in time: There’s a whole subplot about Andy’s mom, a conservative radio host, being courted by Fox News on the eve of the SCOTUS gay marriage decision. (And the “glitter mafia” coming after her. The author hedges on his sympathies, but it’s pretty clear he falls on the liberal spectrum of things and is going for a “the mom is a person, despite her terrible politics” approach.)
Overall: Did you like stupid rom-coms starring schlubby comedians and manic pixie dream girls? That’s what you’re getting here.