In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

 

Everything about this book hinges on the end. If it's done right, the story will be an intense, emotional read. If done wrong, it will feel overly-contrived and cliche.

At the end, I cried.

Putting a unique spin on fate, In Five Years starts with Dannie. She's a corporate lawyer who's young and hungry. She flourishes in knowing the details, in always having a plan. She knows things, like where to live in NYC, what firm she should work for, when exactly her boyfriend will propose. It's all figured out, until one night she falls asleep for an hour and lives a life five years in the future.

In this premonition nothing is as it should be, and Dannie wakes up in fear of what five years from now will do to her master plan. She can't tell anyone close to her about this vision, not her boyfriend or her absolute best friend, Bella. It's her secret, one she wants to try and prevent so her perfect life can unfold.

Flash forward to almost five years into the future, and Dannie feels like she's dodged the bullet. She's got the job, the fiance, the apartment, but then it all changes. And then it changes again. Each hiccup in her master plan brings her closer to that night she saw in her sleep, but not in the way she expected. At the end of the book, the night plays out exactly as it does in her dream (this isn't a spoiler) with incredibly different circumstances surrounding it. What she dreaded happening for five years might possibly be the night she'd been waiting for.

This is a story about great love and extreme grief. It's about letting yourself to feel big emotions whether or not they allow you to maintain control. Dannie is given a gift to see a moment of her future, and even though she misinterprets it, having the knowledge gives her solace when she needs it most.

This book surprised me in all the best ways. It is beautiful and sad, but powerful. The devotion of the characters was something special to read. You might need a tissue, but this is a good one.

The Female Persuasion: A Novel by Meg Wolitzer

I'm not really sure what this book is about.Initially, the impression was it would be a feminist journey of a shy, slightly withdrawn girl coming into her own while surrounded by inspirational women. It's kind of that, but then also not. The trajectory Greer -- our lead -- starts on really becomes where she ends up. The "major" event that might have sent her on a tangent really just helps her get to where you expect her to be all along. It's strange. She does learn how to speak up and speak out, but it's not cliche in that she's suddenly empowered. Also, I think she would have gotten to where she ended up regardless of what happened in the story.

The book revolves around six characters, three men and three women. The women have a much more dominant role in the book, but the men are present in one way or another. The females have a common thread of purpose, the males are a bit more listless,. Even the most successful man, Emmett, has a significant inability to listen. Cory, Greer's boyfriend, suffers a great family tragedy and withdraws from the world. His own grief becomes the central need he must attend to, leaving Greer out in the cold. The third guy, Darren simply serves as a catalyst to get Greer angry about how men get away with improper behavior. The guys get to tell a little of their stories, but only one is really "good." They're all flawed at varying degrees.

The women include Greer, her friend Zee, and Faith. Zee encourages Greer to think and act like an activist. Faith, much older than the other two, has already created a successful career around speaking out for women. She gives Greer her first job out of college, working for a foundation that puts on events and does special projects to aid those in need. The foundation is funded by Emmett's company. Emmett is in love with Faith. He's doing this to be close to her. Allowing the men to also exhibit the stereotypical gender roles often found in literature is a subtle piece to this book. It's not a full role reversal though. 

I didn't love this book, but the more I think about it, the more I appreciate how the author decided to flaw her characters. It's not a hyper-realized version of men and women, it's not a declaration of one being better than the other. It's the mediocre reality that we all mess up to varying degrees. Sometimes we overcome those mess ups, sometimes we hide them and hope they stay hidden, and sometimes we never acknowledge we did wrong. It's telling who people are by how they handle their flaws, regardless of whether they're a man or woman. I like that the author is willing to admit that sometimes your flaws tarnish all the good you're putting out into the world.

I picked up this book because The Interestings is a favorite of mine. This isn't as good. It's not bad though. Maybe you'd like it.

Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

It's difficult to pinpoint what this book is really about. It starts with a focus on the struggle of navigating divorce, but from the man's perspective. Then, it shifts slightly. You realize the narrator isn't the man, but rather a female friend of his who really wasn't around during the failed marriage. Part three of the story then swings over to the ex-wife, transforming the book into a heavily feminist-tinted story about society's views and expectations of married women with children, and the damage that causes. 

I've thought about it, and what I think the book is about is the toxicity of expectations. All the characters in this book, no matter whose story we're hearing, are in crisis because they've fallen victim to expectations. 

Toby Fleishman is the first one in trouble. He's put everything into his family and his career as a doctor. Now it's all different. He's getting divorced. He has to date again. He has to continually put one thing in his life above another, never in the order that he wants. His heart is wounded from a failure of his partner to feel as much as did. 

Rachel, his ex-wife is in crisis simply from overload. She works like a dog to make the money that keeps her family in the higher tier of New York City society. She invests so much time working, communicating with the nanny, and agonizing over her kids' schedules and social calendars. It all has to be perfect. Every exercise class she takes or lunch she goes on helps solidify their social standing. Why couldn't her ex see that?

Elizabeth, our narrator, is friends with Toby from college. They met on a semester abroad in Israel. Now, 20 years later as they're all entering their forties, she's back in his life, happy to have someone to distract her from her own issues. She's not happy as a stay-at-home mom. She struggles with the direction her career went, probably because she's a woman. She's a little tired of putting her family first even though she loves them.

All three characters, and a few others who jump in and out, are all trying to navigate the expectations of life and it's freaking hard. Who can't relate to that? Yes, it's convenient that I'm currently a forty-something with kids stuck at home on coronavirus quarantine, but still, I get it.

This book is complex and beautiful. It's not afraid to give into the rambling narrative that is the mind of a forty-something with kids, a job, and a million priorities. It's what a modern mid-life crisis really is. You no longer go out and buy a red convertible, but rather spend countless hours second-guessing your place in the rat race, whether you're screwing up your kids, or how to hide your aggravation and keep going. These characters feel the struggle in its most heightened way, but perfectly capture what happens when you need to be in five places at once.

In the end, without spoiling things, the outlook looks good for our characters. The crisis feels temporary, but that doesn't mean it wasn't intense. When the book ends, you feel like everyone is going to be okay. It won't be perfect, and it will take a lot of work, but they'll survive without imparting any lasting damage. It feels real.

This is a great book, and I really enjoyed reading it. I think it will speak to a lot of people for a variety of reasons, and highly recommend it.