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melissakuzma's review
3.0
This book was ok. It won't be winning any awards or anything, but it's entertaining enough. I couldn't relate to, nor did I particularly like any of the characters, so that didn't help. I also felt like they weren't fleshed out enough, they were just "types" (the ambitious one, the stay-at-home mom, the lesbian).
melissakuzma's review against another edition
3.0
This book was ok. It won't be winning any awards or anything, but it's entertaining enough. I couldn't relate to, nor did I particularly like any of the characters, so that didn't help. I also felt like they weren't fleshed out enough, they were just "types" (the ambitious one, the stay-at-home mom, the lesbian).
hikereadbeer's review against another edition
3.0
Really long read, because, in the end, it was just boring!
yangyvonne's review against another edition
4.0
Four Harvard friends have an innocuous conversation about how many children they want to have. Flash forward to middle age, and oh, how things have changed! Laura is married to Mac, a successful businessman and has two small children. Elise is a lesbian and her partner bore their child. Neil almost dropped-off the face of the earth, but not before acting as a sperm-donor to his ex-girlfriend, Jenny. Jenny then made him sign away any rights to the offspring. Now, Jenny's husband has cancer, Neil wants to see his son, Laura sleeps with Neil and Elise is fighting with Chrissy and yet, in the end, it works-out for them all.
This is a really twisted take on the whole "coming of age" idea. I appreciate when a book doesn't patronize its reader with happy endings and perfect arcs to a story, but this was almost too depressing. From adultery to terminal illness, to non-bonding with kids, to mid-life crises, every one of these characters is flawed. And yes, all of us are flawed, but who picks-up fiction to be reminded of that? And, after a while, a reader wants to "like" someone they are reading about! There was just no one in here worthy of any effort.
This is a really twisted take on the whole "coming of age" idea. I appreciate when a book doesn't patronize its reader with happy endings and perfect arcs to a story, but this was almost too depressing. From adultery to terminal illness, to non-bonding with kids, to mid-life crises, every one of these characters is flawed. And yes, all of us are flawed, but who picks-up fiction to be reminded of that? And, after a while, a reader wants to "like" someone they are reading about! There was just no one in here worthy of any effort.
eileen9311's review against another edition
4.0
This was a gem I happened on by following a goodreads review of Jessica Shartuck' s forthcoming novel, due for release early this year. I loved the setting of A Perfect Life, Cambridge, Massachusetts, as New England is in my background. After reading one passage early on: "Laura had a memory of that other time, a million years ago it seemed, when they had all been college students, living in that cushy, all-American holding pen for almost adults, reading books and being cooked for, drinking five nights week and worrying over nothing more than term papers and social gaffes", I found the prose addictive. There's humor and pathos as well as deep sadness in this tale of four college friends reunited when their lives intersect years later. The author does have a knack for describing seemingly ordinary occurrences with great clarity. Nostalgia, regret, insecurity, the strengths and liabilities of friendship - all are skillfully wrought. How quickly one's life can be upended resonates in the following passage: "Not that she cared so deeply about the behind-her-back circumstances of it - but precisely that she didn't. It didn't matter. It served only to emphasize the stark life-and-death difference of the planet she now inhabited. A planet where such frivolities as sex and marital strife and attraction had no place. It filled her with a desperate sadness for her old life." Perfect Life contains much food for thought - and it's quite a story!
torriejaywhite's review against another edition
4.0
This was a finely crafted novel built around the central questions of a life created well. Four friends navigate a year in their lives as their carefully constructed plans fall or shift or turn up empty despite all the planning.
It’s a novel about creation: how do you create the life you want, and after you’ve done that, how do you contend with the life you built?
I was swept up in this book. Shattuck is a talented writer, and her characters and plot are both well developed. It’s a book, though, of white status anxiety that already feels dated. Wealthy white people, in particular mothers, who need to make sense of their comfortable, monied lives. It reminded me of Meg Wolizter’s The Ten Year Nap, though Perfect Life felt less anthropological. Both novels, though, exist in a world that feels either vanished entirely (in the recession, in the stagnating economy, in this split and evolving world of regressive politics and radical change) or exists entirely behind a mantle of wealth.
It’s a novel about creation: how do you create the life you want, and after you’ve done that, how do you contend with the life you built?
I was swept up in this book. Shattuck is a talented writer, and her characters and plot are both well developed. It’s a book, though, of white status anxiety that already feels dated. Wealthy white people, in particular mothers, who need to make sense of their comfortable, monied lives. It reminded me of Meg Wolizter’s The Ten Year Nap, though Perfect Life felt less anthropological. Both novels, though, exist in a world that feels either vanished entirely (in the recession, in the stagnating economy, in this split and evolving world of regressive politics and radical change) or exists entirely behind a mantle of wealth.
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