Remember the movie Silver Linings Playbook that everybody loved, but I didn’t because I thought it was too dark, but it seemed to give audiences optimism? This book, I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You by Courtney Maum, was like that (and written around the same time too!). The similarities were that there’s a main character who is the protagonist and who is also really flawed and who lacks self awareness, and while the plot of the work goes on to tie the book up in a tidy little bow (it’s upmarket fiction after all, so reader’s aren’t without their challenges, but still), we can see that little, if any, growth or learning has occurred, and so we can assume that the same horrors will continue to occur and that is far darker than the tidy surface of the story.

In works like these, it seems like most audiences enjoy the “happy” ending, but I leave them with a little raincloud over my head at the helplessness and hopelessness of humanity. To me, these are some of the darkest books to read. This book was like that. That said, I think most readers will like this story.

There’s also a voyeuristic quality to this author’s depictions, who seems to be neither British, nor French, nor male, and yet these are the views that are so portrayed in the novel. So I continually found myself more interested in the author’s gaze on these characters and scenes at times than on the story. I also simply have never met a man who seems to care and pine and yearn and regret in these specific ways. Maybe they’re out there! These are a few things that pulled me from the story and made me think. So anyway, this is an interesting and self-aware book in ways that seem both intentional and not.