Still Life with Husband

by Lauren Fox

Emily never thought she'd be so completely bored with her life and she's only thirty. She is bored but not miserable in her marriage to her college boyfriend Kevin, who loves his dull job as a technical writer. She compares their ten year relationship to reading the same novel over and over and over. Her work as a freelance writer and part time assistant editor of a medical journal may sound interesting but that's unfulfilling as well. Now Kevin has started pressuring Emily to buy a house in the suburbs and start a family, both of which are completely unappealing to her. She is ambivalent about having kids, especially with Kevin right now, and loves their apartment in the city, but when she tries to tell him, he basically ignores her. One day, Emily is having coffee in a cafe with her best friend Meg, who is newly pregnant and on leave from her job as a teacher, when she meets a fellow writer. David is everything that Kevin isn't -- interesting, attentive, and new. They try to ignore their mutual attraction but soon Emily is hiding her wedding ring, lying to Kevin and sneaking off to meet David at his apartment. Against all odds, the author somehow makes Emily a likeable yet flawed character and Kevin is just annoying enough to make her affair seem somewhat justified. The plot thickens when David breaks her heart, Kevin discovers the truth and Emily finds herself pregnant. Sounds a little soap opera-ish but with solid writing and believable characters, Fox pulls it off. The ending is a bit open ended which sometimes annoys me but it felt right for this book. Recommended. ****