Standard Deviation - Katherine Heiny

Description

Graham Cavanaugh’s second wife, Audra, is everything his first wife was not. She considers herself privileged to live in the age of the hair towel, talks non-stop through her epidural, labour and delivery, invites the doorman to move in and the eccentric members of their son’s Origami Club to Thanksgiving. She is charming and spontaneous and fun but life with her can be exhausting.

In the midst of the day-to-day difficulties and delights of marriage and raising a child with Asperger’s, his first wife, Elspeth, re enters Graham’s life. Former spouses are hard to categorize – are they friends, enemies, old flames, or just people who know you really, really well? Graham starts to wonder: How can anyone love two such different women? Did he make the right choice? Is there a right choice?

Review

I was drawn into this book immediately - I just loved it from page one. The book as such has no plot, rather it ambles through the lives of Graham and Audra and all whom they come into contact with. Not forgetting also their son Matthew and those he interacts with too - especially the members of the Origami Club.

Maybe you feel already the book is not for you, and you may be right if you like a beginning, middle and end, rather than a peek into other people's lives. It's kind of like an extended sitcom episode where you just love all the characters and wish you could be there with them.Don't get me wrong plenty happens, but it's just life - however in the hands of Katherine Heiny it is laugh out loud funny.

The star of the book for me is Audra - and whilst you may think she is an empty bucket that makes the most noise, when you look deep down, as Graham her husband often does, you see that actually she's quite the strategist. Mainly to progress her son she forges bonds and unlikely friendships but there is also a very kind side to her demonstrated through the multitude of house guests invited to stay - and we aren't talking overnight here.

Audra also has some cracking lines such as "...his employee discount to buy some scented candles and I told him he should buy one for Elspeth but he said she didn't believe in them. How can you not believe in scented candles? They're not like UFOs". I could quote so many more fantastic lines like that.

I'm giving this book 5 out of 5 stars and my thanks go to Netgalley for a copy to review

Comments

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