Wine and Whining: Gone by Cathi Hanauer

Hello Bookworms!

It’s safe to say that I’m in too many book clubs… The count is three. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to name them. The original book club shall now be known as Wine and Whining (not because anyone else does this, but because I get quite nasal when I don’t like the selection. I’ve been around these ladies for over a year now and therefore have ceased to be on my better behavior.) The neighborhood book club shall henceforth be referred to as Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons (because Lorna Landvik wrote a fabulous book with this title, and it’s about a neighborhood book club.) The third book club is a new venture for me. In case you don’t follow my twitter or facebook pages (which you can easily do by clicking the buttons to your right…) you may have missed my shameless self promotion. I was asked to be a guest contributor by Lauren of Filing Jointly…Finally to do a monthly book club type column on her brilliant blog. Since she refers to her readers affectionately as “Blogstalkers,” I shall refer to anything having to do with said column/club as Blogstalker Book Club. (This month we’re reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. You know you want to read along!)

Last week we had our latest meeting of Wine and Whining. The selection was Gone by Cathi Hanauer. I was not a fan of this book. To be fair, it wasn’t that it was poorly written or anything. I just didn’t really like any of the characters and some of the situations made me angry. If the mark of good writing is that you can elicit emotions from your readers, Cathi Hanauer is a genius.

Here’s the premise of Gone. Our protagonist is Eve Adams (points of the amusing name there) and she’s a nutritionist who runs her own consulting practice. She is married to Eric who is a sculptor. Yep. A for real fine art sculptor who makes stuff out of bronze. They have two kids; a 14 year old who seems hell-bent on getting into trouble and an 8 year old boy who is somewhat sickly for no apparent reason.

Eve and Eric go out for their anniversary dinner. When they return home, Eve asks Eric to return the leggy college aged babysitter to her dwelling (even though Eric is drunk and Eve should have realized this before asking him to drive anyone anywhere.) Eric’s in a serious artist slump and is depressed (which is later revealed as though it’s a huge shocking development) so he decides to offer the hot babysitter a ride to Arizona. Right now. Without telling his wife. He doesn’t even sleep with the babysitter. They literally just take an impromptu road trip.

You still with me? Okay. So then Eve is at home and she’s all “oh crap my husband left me for the hot babysitter, now what?!” She goes on with her life trying to keep it together. She keeps seeing clients, struggles with the children, struggles with their emotions, buys a parakeet (I guess nobody buys parakeets when they’re of sound mind and body.) All well and good.

Gone. Not to be confused with Gone Girl or Gone With The Wind, because I liked those a lot better.

Eve has this client named Michael. He’s morbidly obese and she’s trying to help him get healthy. Wonderful. Only Michael OBVIOUSLY has a serious psychological disorder. His binging is like a Lifetime Original Movie about bulemia, but without the puking. This character really hit a nerve with me. Hanauer’s description of Michael felt judgmental and void of empathy. He was apparently SO fat that he couldn’t help but stink constantly (because you know, all big people smell bad?!) and was fired from his job for being a stinky fat man. Really? I know when you’re morbidly obese it’s harder to do things. Getting up stairs and whatnot can feel like a marathon. We get it. He’s a fat guy. Stop being so mean about it. I don’t care if he’s fictional! He needs an intense psychotherapy program, not a flaky nutritionist who thinks she’s revolutionary for telling people to eat real food in healthy portions. Eve also seems to think she’s a genius for finding “just the right” gastric bypass surgery for him. NONE OF THIS IS NEWS, EVE!

Now for Eric. He’s an ARTIST. Artists are supposed to be all moody and brilliant and whatever. In his moment of drunken clarity, Eric goes off to Arizona, drops the babysitter off with her cancer ridden mother (how nice of him) and moves in with his mom. He stumbles around for a while trying to figure himself out. Then, like a beacon of light, one of his sisters who happens to be a therapist says, “Dude. I think you’re depressed. Try this Lexapro for a while.” So he does. And what do you know? FOUR days later, he’s CURED. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! Anybody who has ever suffered with anxiety or depression or bipolar disorder could tell you it’s not that freaking easy. Sometimes, the doctors don’t figure out the medication that will help you right away. Sometimes they have to play with the dosage. Sometimes people need face to face therapy in addition to pills. I don’t think there is anyone in the history of the world who has ever been cured of their psychological disorder by four doses of Lexapro.

So what about the point of the book? About how Eve dealt with her emotions of being left? How Eve and Eric reconcile? The effect this all has one the kids? Honestly, I don’t care. I was so angry about the Michael situation and Eric’s miraculous recovery that I couldn’t enjoy the rest of the book. And thus, I went to book club, drank wine, and whined about how much I didn’t like it.

Don’t worry though. Cathi Hanauer has a zillion positive reviews on Amazon. My meanness will do nothing to hurt her sales. Also, if you happen to be Cathi Hanauer, I’m sorry. I just didn’t like those two aspects of your book and was too distracted to appreciate the finer points. Clearly it’s my personal demons and not your writing that caused my irrational anger. I’m an incurable book heckler.