Sometimes you pick up a book just because the title grabs you. And the fact that a reference to the opening line of Anna Karenina did that for me gives you all a good idea of how often I go clubbing or whether I might wear horn rimmed glasses or potentially get excited about NPR programming. It's a love story, a quirky, thoughtful one. Rachel Kadish, the author, is taking issue with Tolstoy's quote "Happy families are all alike- each unhappy family is miserable in its own way", and the implication that happiness in life and literature is boring and the only interesting subject material is tragic. I think she's absolutely right in her criticism of this trend- it's annoying and depressing. Ugh. It's particularly bad in modern lit. I drop prospective reading material like a.p. calculus when I read the word "bleak" in a blurb on the back cover. "Bleak" is not a compliment, dammit!
Kadish rambles a bit, but I like her novel's mix of English professor trying to balance a serious (but not bleak) career while falling in love (of course it can't go completely smoothly); I like her philosophical asides on books and romance and marriage, and yes, I like the happy ending.
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