So Happy Together by Maryann McFadden

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I had a hard time putting this book down.  I related to the main character, Claire, in that she is in her mid 40's and trying to reinvent herself.  Her daughter has left on poor terms, her parents are getting older and her father has been diagnosed with Parkinson's.  But she thinks she is all set -- she has met Rick and he's going to change everything.  They are going to move to Arizona (from NJ) and while he golfs she can take all the pictures she wants.  But then her daughter returns, pregnant, and her father takes a turn for the worse, and her mother chooses to move into a retirement home so that she won't be a burden to her daughter.  But that move sucks all hope from her and she begins to fade.  It was such a wonderful layering of generations and their problems, with no pat answers.  Just the hope that they will somehow figure it out.  So they all go Cape Cod, where Claire is taking a photography workshop, and she leaves her parents and daughter to figure things out while at the same time not completely abandoning them.  It was real.  The fiancee is quite obviously ill-suited as he wants nothing to do with her family, and then there is of course THE GUY ... but not overly done.  All in all I completely enjoyed this book and was sad to see it end.



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