I love it when a publicist knows exactly what I want to read, and just sends it. I told a woman very close to me that I was reading this book, and she laughed, knowing it is at least 180 degrees away from what I normally love. What grabbed me first? This book made me feel like I might die if I didn’t read it right now. Sophie is a disaster; hearts are shooting out of her eyes for the less than interested Eric. He makes nice bank, and lives in a gilded cage on the Upper East Side, in a city where women out number men five to one. With those odds it’s very difficult to imagine relationships not appearing like Chinese menus in everyone’s mail slot.
Then there is Annie, Sophie’s best friend, a girl who is fond of vomiting on her own shoes, and then tap dancing her way into the lives of everyone around her. She has grown up in the family bar in a small Jersey town, and she’s the one who gets the ball rolling for Sophie, or, rather, it’s her driving abilities while shit-faced that get things started. I loved the “I’m Ok, You’re Ok” relationship between Sophie and Annie, despite the fact that they are both plummeting down an airshaft while frantically texting for doctor’s appointments. Sophie follows Annie to Alcoholics Anonymous and this is where the fun really starts. Annie is bitter, and probably better off drunk, because in her case, self-help is just another coping strategy to make things easier, or at least, less hard. Sophie realizes that she needs to set up a love rehab, much like AA but for girls who are gripped tight by that alligator of love, the man they can’t have, for whatever reason. These men are the definition of “dick”, and the stories these women tell in love rehab are like a Cub Scout badges of honor, hilarious, fearless and mostly sad.
Sophie uses these women to get better; she helps them help her, sort-of. After the first meeting, where a surprising amount of love “sick” women show up, we get to see Sophie and all her neurotic glory, as she fire hose’s her past with Eric on everyone, to a point where a good hard slap is in order. Did I say this novel is very, very hard to put down, and there isn’t a likeable man to be found? Well, that’s a lie, we are supposed to like the bad doctor named Joe who is recovering from marriage infidelity, which helped his drinking become a problem. Sophie takes the love rehab seriously, and makes her members watch romantic comedies so they can realize that this is not how your love life should be. She gets each woman to change her ways, and suddenly this coven becomes a safe haven in a remarkably likeable way.
We spend a lot of time in Sophie’s head, as she pines for her dead grandmother, Eric, and her life seems to be coming together as it all unravels. Joe slyly remarks to Sophie that she actually can’t start fixing herself until she bottoms out. Having done AA myself, it’s a brutally frank and arresting affair, a coping mechanism that works for some, but not a silver bullet. The great thing about the bottom is that there is only one way up.
