This is a novel dealing with a difficult subject - abuse. To make the reader aware of how, when and why this starts, the author uses a diary format to record the events.
The abuse begins as a child while living with an obsessively controlling mother and a weak-willed father.
…more After some rude awakenings with boyfriends, Kate marries Rodney and finds that he has already planned her life to be a full-time parent, a cook who will prepare his meals so that he can participate in athletic events and a Saturday night sexual partner who will satisfy his fetishes and fantasies. In short, he plans to be a married man who continues to live like a bachelor. Kate, in turn, dotes on her son, becomes a house mouse with all her scrubbing and cleaning and cooking. Her other passion becomes "building a house twig by twig, papering and painting walls, filling rooms with quilts, curtains, covers, wicker baskets, as well as furniture which she sanded, scraped and painted.
Three hundred pages of short sentences, in the form of repetitive conversations and the monotonous activities in Kate's life make the book boring and very depressing.
In the last chapter, we find that Kate has sanded, scraped and painted fifteen chairs (twenty-one more to go), and she is thinking about jams and cakes to make. I asked myself, 'are "we" really on a new route, or is this the same old circle?'
While the title is clever, the book itself is for a very limited audience. (less)
