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"What do you hate most about the one you love? Mary Gilmour doesn't know whether it's his not quite reaching the laundry basket when he throws his dirty clothes at it (but doesn't ever walk over to finish the job) or the balled-up tissues he puts on the bedside table when he has a cold. Is it the way he never completely empties the dishwasher, leaving the 'difficult' items for her to put away, or the fact that she is responsible for all of the domestic tasks in the house because she's only working part-time? Mother to two young boys, Mary knows how to get them to behave the way she wants. Now she's designing the spousal equivalent of a star chart, and every little thing her husband does wrong will go on it. Though Mary knows you're supposed to reward the good behavior rather than punish the bad, the rules for those in middle age are different than the rules for those not even in middle school..."--Dust cover flap.… (more)
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Inspired by her son's star chart where he is awarded a star for good behaviour, Mary decides to do the same for Joel, but with black marks for all his misdemeanours.
I was expecting this book to be a lot funnier than it was, and in the first half I was thinking this would be a 3/5 book. It was readable, but nothing special. However, once I really got into the story, and Mary stopped sounding like quite so much of a whinger and it became clear that the situation was really making her unhappy, the story improved and became less about amusement and more about a tale of how to work together in a relationship to stop resentment forming. There were still many bits that made me smile, and one particularly shocking bit that made me gasp, and overall I found this a very good read.
The basic premise of the book is that Mary is dissatisfied with the contribution that her husband Joel makes to the domestic chores, while everyone else tells her how wonderful he is and how she's so lucky to have him. So she draws up The List, a spreadsheet she uses to calculate the number of misdemeanours committed by her husband, allowing him a net 100 breaches in 6 months, and intending to raise the suggestion of divorce if he exceeds that target. Of course, things don't go according to her plan.
I'm not sure if this book is meant to illustrate that no-one sees their own life as perfect, or if it is meant to be some kind of feminist mantra that men should do more around the house. Either way, by presenting only the view of one rather anally retentive person, it fails. I can't help thinking it would have been better if we'd been able to see events from not just Mary's perspective, but Joel's as well. It seems obvious to me, as the reader, that Mary has many habits and expectations that could be considered highly irritating, but we don't get to explore that.