Grown-up Book Review--I am Having So Much Fun Here Without You by Courtney Maum

My summer reading list has included Beautiful Ruins, Before We Met, The Bookman's Tale: a Novel of Obsession, Whatever You Love, and I am Having So Much Fun Here Without You.  I am not going to review all of them, but I will say that I found all of them worth reading and a nice break from teen books.  Give me a complex protagonist, thank you!
Anyway, here is my take on this one, a fairly recent arrival.  By the way, the cover stinks.  If I had seen it before reading it, I might not have bothered to select this one.  What is it with the childish dripping fonts, lately on book covers?  I have seen a zillion of them and they are all equally unappealing.  Someone needs to let the publishers know...

Richard has made the ultimate marital mistake.  Not only did he have sex with another woman, but he went so far as to love her, and for this his beautiful wife, Anne, may not be able to forgive him.  Richard, a British artist, and Anne, a French lawyer, were happily married and doing very well living in Paris.  When Richard begins doing what he considers “decorative” art, paintings that people will want to hang over their sofas, rather than bold political statements as installations, his attention wanders to an American woman he meets at an art film showing.  In this turnabout on the infidelity plot, it is Lisa, the other woman, who is just in it for a fling, and strangely, Richard who seems to want more from her.  However, it is really Richard’s disappointment with the way his art career is going, and his questioning of himself as a man and as a husband that are at the root of his infidelity.  Once the idea that his wife might actually leave him takes root, he discovers that he values that relationship more than he thought.  He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too—nothing new here.  What is new is the fact that he sets about trying to repair his relationship with his wife, instead of taking the easy way out.  At first, he tries all the wrong ways of winning her back, childishly thinking that if he can just rectify a couple of things, he will be restored to her favor.  He soon realizes that it will take more than the return of a painting and an apology to win back her affections.  Like many people, he thinks it is the sex act with someone else that has broken Anne’s heart, when in fact it is his feelings for Lisa, the letters he continued to receive  from her, and his mourning of the end of the affair that are the real betrayal.  Interestingly, it is when he takes a look at himself and tries to rediscover what makes him a productive artist and a satisfied person, that he becomes a more likeable character and begins to make inroads with Anne.  It is through working on his own life, not trying to play on Anne’s sentimentalism, that he becomes a person she might still love.  Trust is another story—you will have to read the book to find out what happens next.

A very satisfying summer read which takes a look at infidelity and the consequences without suffering from too many stereotypes.  A nice sort of reverse-romance for grownups who enjoy a more complex set of motivations and characters.