If you haven't already seen the movie, go get this book. It's about a husband and wife who think they are better than suburbia, with all its conventions and nosy neighbors, and yet have ended up there anyway. And they find themselves sucked into the mundane life they never wanted, the office job, the home improvement projects, the child rearing and the neighborhood social scene. At one point, miserable and their marriage in trouble, they make a plan to extricate themselves, sell the house, leave everything and move to Europe just for the adventure of it. But the pull of regular life is just too strong and it doesn't happen.
This book was about the very issue that I've struggled so much with lately — whether we can be true to ourselves, live the lives we really want, from within conventional society. Can we have our nice houses and lawns and office jobs, and still be our authentic selves? Or do we give too much away in the service of maintaining it all? It is so easy to get sucked into the routines of normal life that we close ourselves off to all the adventures of the world. It's as if this couple is standing before a plate glass window, looking at all that the world has to offer, but can't touch it. At one point, they almost break through, but an invisible hand pulls them back from such a radical move.
It all ends disastrously for them. The wife just cannot accept her mundane existence. I'm hoping my own struggles will have a happier conclusion.
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