2009 book 127

Chandler Burr's You or Someone Like You
My problem with this book stems from totally misinterpreting what it was about. It was described as being about the wife of a Hollywood producer who gets talked into starting a book group, and all of the showbiz elites start to join. So, of course I thought it would be literary, but in a fluffy way. That's not at all what Burr--who is the NY Times' scent critic, whatever that means--is doing with this story, though. It's a very stream-of-consciousness look at the producer's wife and her relationship with her husband, which is shaken badly after their teenage son has a weird experience in Israel (which apparently did happen to Burr). Then everyone has breakdowns. There's hardly any actual book discussion in here, whcih was a bit disappointing to me, considering that at least half the story does take place at book group. Also (and this is a minor peeve), everyone's dialogue is in quotation marks except for the protagonist's, so it's sometimes confusing to know what she's saying and what she's just thinking. I'm sure there's some high literary reason for this, but that's just not the book I was looking to read. B/B+.