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Change is never easy—especially after we’ve settled into the same way of doing things for decades. And in author Marilyn Simon Rothstein’s Husbands and Other Sharp Objects, one woman finds herself faced with one change after another—and it feels like more than she can handle.
The story follows Marcy Hammer as she attempts to help her daughter, Amanda, plan her wedding while dealing with the dissolution of her own marriage. Marcy is finally settling into her new life after her home-wrecking husband, Harvey, fathered a child with a much-younger woman. She’s enjoying time with her friends and her new boyfriend, Jon. But she and Harvey are forced to come together to support the bride-to-be. And though Harvey and Amanda both seem intent on getting Harvey and Marcy back together, Jon is pushing her to move on.
Husbands and Other Sharp Objects tells an honest but humorous story about finding yourself in the midst of the chaos. Marcy is a likable character whose struggles and indecision are entirely understandable. After more than 30 years with Harvey, it’s hard to move on—no matter how much she may want to. And her three grown children—who aren’t exactly eager to accept Jon as a part of the family—don’t make it any easier. No matter how many people tell her to get her own place and start over—or to move on with her life with Jon—it’s all easier said than done. It’s a challenging situation, and while she sometimes handles it with shaky uncertainty, she slowly finds the strength to do what she needs to do.
Meanwhile, in the midst of Marcy’s own relationship challenges, she also finds herself buried in wedding drama. Planning the wedding makes Amanda bossy and selfish and oblivious to everyone else’s feelings. She chooses to fight every single tradition that Marcy and Harvey hold dear—either individually or collectively—and, in the wedding as in her own life, Marcy discovers that she needs to pick her battles wisely.
Still, while the story is thoughtful and often amusing, too, it sometimes falls short on development. There’s a lot going on here—so many different relationships that Marcy is juggling—and, for that reason, none of them really stand out. But the chaos keeps the laughs coming and the pace moving.
At some point, we’ve all faced big changes in our lives—so it’s not hard to relate to Marcy’s struggle. Husbands and Other Sharp Objects may not be a strong, well-developed novel, but it’s still a light and entertaining one.
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