Bleat, Say, Shove

After working in a book shop for a few weeks - and loving it (it takes me back to my days as a librarian) - I decided it was time I caught up with some of the popular fiction that is frequently asked for. My favourite genre is history and biography, so fiction is not always on my bedside table. Recently I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Eat, Pray, Love'. To be fair I must put this in perspective. I decided, long before I became a senior!, that there were not enough days left to read books I wasn't enjoying so I generally read between 25 and 50 pages before making a decision. I decided very early on that this was not a book I wanted to read, but I persisted through pages describing blubbering at night on the bathroom floor because she had realised she didn't like being married to a particular man... and pages of agonising about what she was going to do about it!
This is not a position I have ever found myself in! but generally I am interested in people and how they deal with their dilemmas and find it fascinating discovering how they work through them. Not this time. It has been described as a 'funny, tender, beguiling story about a woman's search for happiness' - but since I didn't actually like the woman in the first couple of chapters I decided I really didn't want to know about her travels as she came to move on in her life and find another course.
I may find the book by her ex-husband an interesting exercise. I would like to know what he thought about what to him must have been a sudden about-face on a relationship that seemed to be going where they both wanted it to. As someone who has been married to the same man for nearly 4 decades I know how difficult it can be to keep a relationship going, but I also know that frequently the rewards of talking something through with someone who is your best friend as well as your emotional support and your lover is enormously rewarding. Maybe that's why I thought the book would have been better titled ... 'Bleat, Say, Shove'