The Year of Pleasures

Sometimes books just show up at my house. Many of my friends know how much I read and pass on piles of books they don’t want anymore. (My parents do this as well, but their cast-offs tend to be things like the complete diaries of Anais Nin or Carl Jung. Sometimes I just don’t have the brain power at the end of the day to read books like that.) The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg was one of the books I found in a box from a friend.

Frankly, I put off reading this book for sometime. It just kept going further down on the to-be-read list. Mostly I put it off because I try to limit the amount of "chick-lit" I read. Too much chick-lit is like too many jelly beans at Easter. So, I have a rotation system that involves classifying books into several categories including fiction and non-fiction (it is usually two fiction then one non-fiction), chick-lit, mystery, favorite authors, must-read classics, and recommended reads (that I otherwise would never touch).

In the end, this book wasn’t really chick-lit. Sure, it was written by a woman primarily about women, but it wasn’t as frivolous as most chick-lit. The basic story is this: A middle-aged woman has just lost her husband to cancer. They were deeply in love and had been married for approximately 20 years and had no children. After his death, she sells their expensive home in Boston, nets more than $1 million, and drives aimlessly to the Midwest to a small, quaint town to restart her life. Of course, she only does this because her husband has told her he thinks this is how she should deal with her grief. When she finds this small town (which happens to be in Illinois), she immediately finds the perfect old house in the perfect neighborhood and buys it.

There were parts of this story that I was really drawn to while reading it. I have always thought it would be an adventure to pack up all of my stuff and drive randomly to some small quaint town where no one knows me, get a silly no-stress job, and live a simple life. (You know, like Sleeping with the Enemy but without the homicidal husband.) This dream ends in about five minutes when I remember how much I hate small towns and not being able to buy good produce, good coffee, and good wine. But, the dream kept me going through the book.

My biggest problem with the book was the unrealistic nature of the relationships described. The main character thinks adoringly of her husband at every moment. The way he dressed, the food he ate, the books he read, the love notes he sent her, his passion for his work, the way he picked his nose . . . everything about him was perfect. It made me sick. Of course, I know that there is a tendency to obsess about the good things when you lose someone you love. But there is no one in the world that has only good qualities and no bad qualities. It just simply wasn’t believable. Even in grief, you remember the bad parts too.

The other unbelievable part was this character’s relationship with her friends. After her husband dies, she realizes she has no friends. (Of course, her justification for this is that she and her husband were so complete together that there was no need for other people. Barf.) Feeling lonely, she contacts her friends from college, whom she hasn’t seen for more than 20 years. And, of course, those friends pick up everything from their lives and come to her rescue and everything is back like it was 20 years ago. Whatever.

Relationships don’t work like that, at least not in my world. People change and grow and, believe it or not, people do not just sit around waiting for you to re-enter their lives after you ditched them for a man 20 years ago. I don’t buy it.

Aside from this, the book was well written, the story well crafted and woven together. It was a short book, so my irritation was over quickly.