I'm So Happy for You! - a review

I've been reading lighter, more "chick-lit" type books in the last week. A nice break from the more detailed historical fiction that I was gloriously wallowing in before. I love my HF, but sometimes I don't want to read all those obscure names and places and old=fashioned language. I just finished I'm So Happy for Youby Lucinda Rosenfeld. This is the first book I've read from this author, although she has previously published two others in the same genre.

I'm So Happy for Youexamines the relationship between two women who have been friends since college and are now in their mid-thirties. Wendy is married, supporting her husband who has taken a year from his job to write a screenplay, and trying to conceive a child. Daphne is the dramatic mess-up friend, always picking the wrong men, and not making enough money to support herself. Thank goodness parents' Manhattan apartment is free for her use! Suddenly their is a shift in what has been more than a 15 year friendship when Daphne meets Jonathan, handsome, fiscally sound, and treats her like a princess. Within 2 months they are engaged and buying a gorgeous brownstone in Brooklyn, one of Wendy's dreams. Daphne has always picked the wrong men, and her drama with each relationship makes Wendy feel this one will be no different. Besides feeling off-balance with her best friend, things aren't going well for Wendy with Adam. The pressure to conceive has created a tension in their small apartment, and Wendy suspects that Adam is spending more time watching TV than working on hs screenplay.
I'm So Happy for Youlooks at the roles people play in different relationships: dominant/suplicant, decisision-maker/follower, adviser/advisee, and how individual self-perception effects these things. Wendy grew up without a father, and feels that she has a bad relationship with her mother, who lives in the same city, but she only sees a few times a year. I also pondered the thought of the lifetime of a friendship. Are some just for certain periods in our lives, such as being friends with our children's friends' parents? Can you have different friends who never meet each other because their interests don't overlap, other than being YOUR friend? Can a friendship die when each person realizes the other has been playing a role all along?
I read this book in one night, about 4 hours. I was interested to find out how the relationships between Wendy and Daphne and Wendy and Adam would change. I have to say that I did not really like Wendy, and was frustrated by both Adam and Daphne. Adam seemed so apathetic toward Wendy, having a baby, writing the great American film, everything except his Dad and his dog, and Daphne was always in the deepest dumps of depression or flying high with joy. There are many people like these in the world, and they always bug me. I found Wendy to be extremely insecure and almost paranoid about every word spoken to or about her.
This is not to say that I didn't enjoy I'm So Happy for You; I really did like it! Wendy was supposed to come across as insecure, Adam frustrated and apathetic, and Daphne just a little out there. I just found them to be extremely frustrating to me as people. I don't put up with that stuff. I thought this story was extremely well-written and had some great similes and metaphors that made me smile and brought descriptions to life. "The sky was the same color as the ever-growing mountain of newspapers in the hallway outside Wendy and Adam's apartment, waiting to be recycled." Can't we all relate to that pile and imagine that yucky newspaper-print-colored sky? After a big fight with Adam, the tension Wendy feels is described as "walking around with an icicle attached to your back." Having had plenty of snow stuffed down the back of my shirt over the years, I know that awful cold feeling and don't want to imagine it actually being strapped to me! In addition to these vivid descriptions, interesting words and phrases such as, "a fusillade of vituperation" are peppered throughout, really putting the oomph into phrases such as "chewed out," as well as possibly increasing the reader's vocabulary.
I definitely recommend I'm So Happy for You, especially as it is available in paperback, meeting both of my beach reading requirements: paperback and easy to follow storyline. For more information about the book, there is an official I'm So Happy for You website, which has a list of other books Ms. Rosenfeld recommends about friendship.