"Marrying George Clooney: Confessions of a Midlife Crisis" — not what I expected

Marrying George Clooney: Confessions from a Midlife Crisis by Amy Ferris
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

corrections made 3-24-12

I wanted to love this book. I wanted to identify with someone from my age group writing about that certain time of life when the reality of mortality smacks women right in the reproductive gut. Unfortunately, some reviews I read in advance led me to believe that this was a humorous book. It is not. Sure, there are some moments of humor and irony, but mostly, it is a sad and angry book. The most poignant moments deal with her relationship with her mother, who is slipping further and further into dementia. The most annoying moments are disjointed, stream-of-consciousness rantings with large gaps between paragraphs (in the Kindle version, anyway.) I found her "vile" moods (her word, not mine) frightening, and I began to wonder if this is what I can expect from myself a bit further down the road. 

So, maybe I am a wee bit too close to the menopause/midlife crisis time of life. But if now wasn't the right time to read this book? When is? 

It is finally in the Epilogue that Ferris writes the most compelling prose of the book. The story of her mother, their relationship, their life together. This would have been a much stronger, more cohesive book if the parallels to Ferris' change of life and her mother's change of life had been more successfully woven together. 


View all my reviews