We are all fine here

This is, from the face of it, a book about a woman who has an affair with her boyfriend from high school, gets pregnant and isn't sure if the baby is her husband's or her old boyfriend's. It's much more than that, however. It's a thinking-woman's look at mundane jobs (both the boredom of them, and

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the amazing people you can meet in them), at raising a teenager (who occupies both ends of the amazing and aggravating spectrum), at how marriages can become boring and then transform into something wonderful.

The characters in this novel grow. People learn and change, despite themselves. It's a sharp, witty and soulful look at what can make you who you are.

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No topic is spared from the cynical and sarcastic wit of Guterson’s humorous character Julia in We Are All Fine Here, a debut novel. As Julia thinks about her precarious position -- being unsure of the paternity of her unexpected pregnancy -- she also muses, in laugh-out-loud ponderings, about

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all things related to sex and relationships, lip pursing, bathroom wisdom, sex and adultery, screaming children (other peoples), husbands not noticing haircuts, lovers removing their shirts, office parties, sex at the office, teenage sons, therapists who only shrug, bumper stickers, and carpeting. Thrown in for good measure are a series of “Relationship Tests” that might be darkly bitter were they not so funny and truthfully surprising. But beneath the silly and irreverent reflections on her life Julia eventually realizes that she is living in a made-up past and that she has everything in the present going for her. With a bittersweet ending juxtaposed to the wildly comic action, this book, while not for the sensitive reader, will bring both laughter and tears to those who like to look at life through rose-colored cocktail glasses.

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I picked this up as part of my 'reading books tagged 'miscarriage'' project, which did mean I was rather spoilered for what the outcome of Julia's 'is it my husband's? Is it my ex boyfriend's?' angst was going to be. Although, I went into this book thinking it was lightweight and readable but just

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a bit predictable - both the men were a bit useless, I expected she'd angst a lot, lose the baby, and then sort her life out without either of them and Grow as a Person - but it didn't go there. And of all the miscarriage books, it's been, well, the most miscarriagy. The Jodi P did an excellent description of baby-loss, but it was very 'oh, miscarriages, they just happen, but losing your baby at 27 weeks, that's the sad baby-loss thing'. The Ben Elton really did just throw it in with two sentances mostly to sort out the plot. Feathers never clicked with me at all. This book is sad. I mean, obviously it's sad, it's a book about miscarriage, but also... none of the characters are hugely likeable, or hugely in control of their lives. And they don't really fix anything. At the start of the book Julie is married to someone she's not that fussed about, and has a crazy hangup on her ex. At the end of the book... well, she's a bit more sympathetic to her husband (who is sweet, really) and a bit more over her useless ex. But there's no Radical Big Change. She just keeps on going.

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