How to be good

[Suzanne]

I just read this book by Nick Hornby. Is anyone else out there just completely disappointed in it? You make the husband the most unlikeable asshole on the face of this planet who not only treats his wife poorly, but is just a complete dick to his children, and his well-educated and fully-employed wife stays with him for the sake of the children?

How much sense does that make? This isn't the 1950's and she isn't a stay at home wife whose only job skills involve volunteering at the nursing home. In most situations like this, the woman would take the kids and leave, or kick the husband out of the house.

I think that Nick, like a lot of men, seriously misjudges the maternal drive in women. Usually, if the woman stays, it's because she's afraid to leave because he might kill her, she feels so badly about herself that she is convinced that nobody will ever want her, or the community looks down upon divorced women. They just don't stay with a guy because they feel guilty for ruining their children's day.

 

[Please]

I just read this book by Nick Hornby. Is anyone else out there just completely disappointed in it? You make the husband the most unlikeable asshole on the face of this planet who not only treats his wife poorly, but is just a complete dick to his children, and his well-educated and fully-employed wife stays with him for the sake of the children?

How much sense does that make? This isn't the 1950's and she isn't a stay at home wife whose only job skills involve volunteering at the nursing home. In most situations like this, the woman would take the kids and leave, or kick the husband out of the house.

I think that Nick, like a lot of men, seriously misjudges the maternal drive in women. Usually, if the woman stays, it's because she's afraid to leave because he might kill her, she feels so badly about herself that she is convinced that nobody will ever want her, or the community looks down upon divorced women. They just don't stay with a guy because they feel guilty for ruining their children's day.

Depends what community you come from. Are you American by any chance, and if so are you from the South

 

[Oh my god. it's Robby!]

there are at least too distinctly & almost completely different kinds of heterosexual marriages
one for love
&
one for children
and not all are destined to be both
-society forces this connection in more ways than i could possibly list
and the truth is what people desire in a mate and what they need in a fellow parent are vastly different

many broken homes and marriages follow
and while the maternal instinct has long been used and abused by men and women both back and forth
it is interesting to not that the chance of an American woman seeking divorce
is far greater in the absence of children, than a mans
i do not posit what makes such true, but might it not be possible that for many women the idea of marriage independent of motherhood is more alien than that of being a husband without being a father is too many men

carefully noting here that such may be a by product of now archaic, at a minimum, social conventions that objectify a wife more readily as a posession of a husband, and children as an extension of their mother

 

[vivaissy]

i've stopped readin nick hornby books, i think that they are getting progressively worse.
high fidelity was an excellent book (in my list of top 5 books) but his books went downhill from there.

 

[Suzanne]

But if there are children in the marriage, the reason the woman is more likely to stay is because she on her own can't earn enough money to support them. If you are a doctor like this woman, you can afford a nanny.

As for his books getting progressively worse, I think that the problem with this book is that it digs too deep of a hole. It's like movies like the Terminator when they spend the entire movie battling an invincible cyborg and at the end, they just happen to luck into a factory that has a pneumatic press that can squash Arnold....if you understand where i'm going with it.

But this time around, the bad husband changes, but this doesn't come to the relief of the wife because the love has pretty much all gone out of their relationship, and Nick isn't about to send the guy off to the jungles of Africa to battle poverty because that isn't the point of the book. She isn't about to move out because that wouldn't be a good ending because we could have all predicted that. He's not about to go back to being a total asshole because that would defeat the purpose of writing the book, and he's not going to stay a follower of Goodnews because that too would be pointless as you need a resolution. So, you end up with a wimpy middleground of the husband saying "i don't believe in that crap anymore, but i'm not going back to being a total jerk" and the wife staying with him for no other reason than her cowardice of disappointing the children.

 

[Oh my god. it's Robby!]

you end up with a wimpy middleground of the husband saying "i don't believe in that crap anymore, but i'm not going back to being a total jerk" and the wife staying with him for no other reason than her cowardice of disappointing the children.

i think thats oft called reality
which rarely makes for good reading....

 

[Suzanne]

i think thats oft called reality
which rarely makes for good reading....

if we're going for reality, let's look at the Da Vinci Code! Doesn't that depress anybody besides me that the blood descendant of Jesus Christ is as dumb and whiney as Audrey Tatou? At least give her do something like figure out the code that opens the bottle in a moment of divine revelation or something.

 

[vivaissy]

the da vinci code is crap!

dan brown doesn't know how to use italics! they are on EVERY page. honestly. try it!

 

[Oh my god. it's Robby!]

if we're going for reality, let's look at the Da Vinci Code! Doesn't that depress anybody besides me that the blood descendant of Jesus Christ is as dumb and whiney as Audrey Tatou? At least give her do something like figure out the code that opens the bottle in a moment of divine revelation or something.

uhh, some of us may worship Audrey, but not even she could bring me to edure that drivel!