REVIEW: FALLING APART IN ONE PIECE

falling apart in one piece -  one optimist's journey through the hell of divorce
by Stacy Morrison
(Pages 239)
Release date:  March 24th

First of all, thank you to Michelle at Simon and Schuster Canada for sending me an ARC of this book!

This is a story about Morrison's journey through divorce.  She is the successful editor-in-chief of Redbook Magazine, but even while she is soaring in the publishing world her personal life is doing a severe nosedive with no ejection seat in sight.  One day out of the blue her husband announces that he is leaving her and that he can't stand living with her, and he then moves out and leaves her and her infant son to deal with the crumbling house and flooding basement.

Okay, if I'm going to be honest here, I would say that this is not a book that I'm going to rave about.  Stacy Morrison is a good writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed her writing style.  And the first part of the book where she describes her idyllic home life and the details of the day her husband suddenly tells her he is leaving her, are all beautifully written.   And the rest of the book really has its moments, but it's a lot of the same stuff just retold.  I have personally been through a divorce, I had no kids at the time, so I could relate to much of what Morrison was saying.  Especially the part where she was getting super pissed off that people wanted her to whittle down the reason for her divorce into a short concise message.  I used to say after my divorce, that it was not something a person could just summarize in one sentence.  And this is what Morrison was saying.  And she also points out that when people are asking that they aren't necessarily asking about you, they are asking, "do I see myself in here?  Is MY marriage okay?".  The one thing I will say that is a big positive about Morrison's book is that she definately can look long and hard at herself and at a situation and be brutally honest.  I appreciated all of her soul searching as I have been there myself.

Now, the thing I didn't like about it was that Morrison seems like an energy vampire.  You know what I mean?  There are some people in life that seem to suck the energy from people they are near, and I sensed that even from her writing.  I could be way off, but at the very least her book sucked the ever living life right out of me.  About 1/2 way through I was thinking to myself, "Girl, get a therapist!"  And then not one page later did she say that she had already been seeing a shrink for the past decade.  The majority of the book was very draining to read.  Like that person in your life that always has the same problems for years and obsessively talks about the same things over and over until they have finally driven their last friend away with their continuous woes.  I felt a huge amount of relief when I reached the end!  So sad, really.  This is the only reason I am rating it a "2".  Otherwise it would have probably been a "3", but I just could not deny the fact that it was completely exhausting to read.  I think people who have been through divorce will, at the very least, be able to really relate to everything she went through on the outside and more importantly the journey into herself.  It goes to show that divorce does not care if you are a successful business woman hobb knobbing with celebrities, it will still kick your ass just as hard as someone who works at a convenience store.... to that end we are all very much made of the same stuff...fragile and yet with powerful wings to lift us up out of our own misery --- God willing.

RATING:  2/5

REVIEW: WOMEN ARE CRAZY, MEN ARE STUPID

Women are Crazy, Men are Stupid
by Howard J Morris and Jenny Lee

A HUGE THANK YOU to Michelle at Simon and Schuster Canada for sending me this book! 

First of all I'll admit when I opened the envelope and saw this book I thought, "Wha?"  I was totally turned off majorly by the cover. (sorry Michelle!)  As we aaalll know I am a big cover snob and if a book has a "meh" cover I find it very difficult to get past it.  SO, I put it down for a few weeks.  I even lifted it up to show my husband and kids and said, "I mean, really, could you EVER imagine in a MILLION YEARS I would buy a book like THIS?"  And my husband says, "Who knows, Hon, maybe it'll be really really funny?"  To which I scoffed. 

SCOFFED I say!

BOY WAS I WRONG!   This book is HYSTERICAL!  I mean REALLY REALLY FUNNY.  I am going to go waaayyy out on a limb here and say that this book is the FUNNIEST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ IN MY LIFE  E-V-E-R.  It turns out that the authors are writers for (among other things) comedy TV, and Jenny (the crazy one) was a writer for one of the only shows (other than reality) that I watch, "Samantha Who?".  And Howard used to write for the extremely clever and funny, (and one of my husbands favourite shows which he ACTUALLY has every single episode on VHS -- true story)   but long put in its grave, "Dream On."

Here is a little excerpt from near the beginning:  (page 15 and 16)

                                                      THE MYSTERY SOLVED

The history of men acting stupid is a long and varied one that always ends up with some idiot starting another war.  But modern male stupidity as it applies specifically to women is far more interesting and relevant to our purposes.  It actually has its roots in the playgrounds of our youth.  It was there that we first became aware of girls.  It was also there that we first realized that we liked these strange creatures.  They made us feel funny.  But good funny.  A kind of warm and gushy funny.  Of course in those early years it wasn't acceptable to talk about these new feelings with our peers for fear we'd get rightly harangued about the dangers of cooties.  But still, we wanted this five-year-old ponytailed goddess to know that we had a thing for her.  So what did we do?

We hit her.

Or pushed her into the mud and laughed at her.  (I'm so sorry Susan Freyberg.)

.....She starts crying and we're completely unprepared for that.  And she keeps crying until some adult explains to her that we hit her because we like her.

And here her craziness begins.

And there it is.  The fertile soil in which the crazy seed is planted, and thus sprung the stupid tree.  The book gets even better once Howard meets Jenny and his stupid catapolts into a whole other stratosphere of idiotic.  Maybe it's because I have a pretty funny, albiet annoyingly so, husband, who revels in said stupidity, that I found this book so hilarious.  Some of you may or may not know that to me "Everybody Loves Raymond" is not just a TV show, it is MY LIFE.  Even Regan, my hubby, will admit that like Ray he may or may not at times wear his stupid like a shield against my crazy attacks.  The story then takes us through mainly Howards life inside the stupid mobile, and then Jenny's crazy is allowed to breathe (as they put it so brilliantly) and you get the full fledged stupid/crazy/chicken/egg scenario.

There are many MANY times that I thought, "TOTALLY!  Who WOULDN'T go crazy if your so-called shoulder-to-cry on did something as idiotic as that!"  and other times when I thought, "Oh man, poor Howard, he never even had a chance."  And then immediately my mind shifts to, "Wow.  I actually DID something like that to Reg.  Yikes!"  They even manage to weave a beautiful love story throughout the crazy and stupid landscape, and  I'll admit getting a little teary eyed at the end! 

This book is for anyone who is in a relationship, had a relationship, is thinking about a relationship or a therapist trying to save relationships.  It is a fast fun read that will probably have you, if not laughing outloud like me, at the very least smiling out loud. 

4.5/5