I See You Made An Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50

Growing older may not be a picnic, but comedic actress Annabelle Gurwitch (You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up) packs her literary basket with riotous turns in I See You Made An Effort, her very funny, keen observations on middle age.

The book starts with the author, on the cusp of 50, receiving an unwelcome solicitation from the AARP and ends with an essay, rendered in dramatic form, offering a clever take on thoughts that infuse a myriad of menopausal minds as they toss and turn, obsessing over life at four a.m. In between,  Gurwitch offers fourteen, wickedly funny riffs on her hilarious jaunts to the Apple Store, where she lustfully fantasizes about the "Genius" techie, a boy her son's age servicing her computer; her quest for anti-aging concealer; attending a rock concert with her teenage son; the challenges of meditation, growing older in Hollywood, being a member of the "Sandwich Generation" and the perils of Google, among other topics. Unexpected poignancy underscores a piece about a dying friend and her quest for assisted suicide.

Gurwitch, a professed atheist, prefaces many essays with amusing petitions to God, making requests such as if there is a heaven, she'd like to spend her afterlife wearing a plush bathrobe, and if reincarnation exists, she'd like to be a few inches taller in her next life.

 

Humor and sarcasm may serve as the driving force behind each of these comical, laugh-out-loud essays, but profound insight into the absurdities of the feminine experience of modern middle age ultimately infuses Gurwitch's smart, searing wit.

I See You Made An Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50 by Annabelle Gurwitch

Blue Rider Press,  $25.95 hardcover, 9780399166181, 256 pp

Publication Date: March 6, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (3/14/14), click HERE

Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time

Disgruntled commuters everywhere will rejoice over Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time by British journalist Dominic Utton. The novel is based on the author's true story and centers upon "Dan the man," a husband and new father who moves to the English countryside and commutes, via train, to his job at The Globe newspaper. Fed up with 14 months of chronic delays, Dan, a writer, tracks down the e-mail address of the railroad director, Martin Harbottle, of Premier-Westward rail lines and fires off an e-mail expressing his frustration: "My boss was annoyed with me when I arrived in London; my wife will be annoyed with me when I arrive home again in Oxford. And none of it's my fault. It's your fault." 

The goal of each subsequent correspondence—99 e-mails in all—reflects, in tone and length, the duration of Dan's daily inconveniences due to chronic railroad service delays. Dan believes that if his time has to be wasted, so, too, should the director's, who sporadically writes back to Dan with cautious reserve. What begins as an electronic gripe session spirals into a largely one-sided memoir, where Dan opens up about his life sharing his tastes in music; his impressions of fellow commuters; scandalous current events and politics at his newspaper; the challenges of his home life, especially a wife suffering post-natal depression; and Dan's temptations with alcohol indulgence and a potential extra-marital entanglement. All of this adds up to form a wholly original—and very entertaining—modern epistolary novel.

Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time by Dominic Utton

Oneworld Publications,  $15.99 paperback, 9781780743721, 256 pp

Publication Date: February 25, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (3/7/14), click HERE