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Otherwise Engaged |
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 Otherwise Engaged bySuzanne Finnamore Random House Canada (Vintage Books) 209 pages, 2000 ISBN 0375706429 Reviewed by our UK Editor Rachel A. Hyde Eve believes that when the man she loves proposes to her and she accepts, life will be happy ever after. There is the ring to be shown to friends, the wedding to be planned, the honeymoon to be booked - and Michael her fiancé to get to know properly. She has seen the veneer of the man but not his whole self. Over the next few months, he appears to change before her eyes like a shape shifter. Not because he truly does, but because she realizes how little she knows him until they share their lives. Does he sleep with the window opened or closed? How many pillows does he use? Why does he throw his socks on the floor instead of putting them away? Eve realises that her life is set to change irrevocably. Suddenly, she is not at all certain that this is what she wants. For better or for worse? This book makes most novels on marriage look naïve. It exposes in its honest, blunt diary style what really goes through a woman’s mind as she plans her wedding, instead of just the way she looks to others on the surface. Eve worries about being second-best to her husband’s first wife "it’s so Nancy Kerrigan"; knowing that any children they have won’t replace the fact that he will never see his first child; and all the other minutiae of a life shared with another - from toothpaste on his clothes and chewing with his mouth open, to the films he likes. Eve wanted it to be perfect, just like in the commercials she makes. But the real world isn’t like that – and they end up more like two morbid, grouchy orang-utans. Read this novel for its sharp and witty exposé of a modern marriage. Finnamore doesn’t waste a word and her stream of consciousness style strikes home more than any other style. It is like reading her personal diary or being a party to her innermost thoughts. So many books show life the way it ought to be. Otherwise Engaged shows life the way it is for a change. |
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