andre_reads's review against another edition
5.0
This is not Prep, at all. For starters, I find Hannah much more likeable and relatable than Lee, and let's admit it, she's just plain nicer. Anyway, getting to the point, this book is definitely a good read! The writing, the descriptions, the dialogues, the characters...but mostly, the character's growth throughout the book. I mean, it's amazing how Sittenfeld portrays Hannah's development and maturity in such a perfect manner. Needless to say, I absolutely loooooved the ending and hope this is not the last we hear from this author!
sonia_reppe's review against another edition
4.0
Really liked this book, except for the last chapter; I don't like the way the story turned out, and I didn't believe how Hannah could be happy in her circumstances at the end. The first page starts like chic lit but the book turns into something so much better. Sittnenfield's writing is endearing.
jdglasgow's review against another edition
4.0
I’ve now read three novels by Curtis Sittenfeld (RODHAM, AMERICAN WIFE, and now THE MAN OF MY DREAMS) and I’m eager to read the rest. She’s quickly become one of my favorite authors and this book is as enjoyable as the other two, although if I weren’t already a convert I probably never would have picked it out on my own. I can imagine that, like AMERICAN WIFE, the title and image of the book cover (a man’s folded dress shirts, no doubt folded by a dutiful housewife) would have turned me away from reading it due to a misguided (and misogynistic?) belief that the book wasn’t *for* me and more likely than not was not good at all. What a loss that would have been!
The three books I’ve read have all been primarily about the romantic entanglements of upper-class female protagonists; or rather, that’s what it seems to be about at a surface level, whereas in fact the stories are more about the very relatable internal clamor of anxieties, prejudices, principles and doubts that animate her characters’ actions. None of Sittenfeld’s protagonists have been fully valorous; even Hillary Rodham, who comes closest to being a hero, has an especially damning moment influenced by greed and latent racism. The nuance of Sittenfeld’s protagonists is part of what makes her work so enticing to me.
This book follows its lead Hannah Gavener from age 14 to 29, and I was all in from the very start. Hannah is staying with her aunt as the book opens, after her father “exiled” Hannah, her sister Allison, and their mother from the house. Even after things have settled, her mother won’t return. I keenly felt some of Hannah’s thoughts here. For instance, she admits her father’s actions were wrong but insists they were “not more insane or cruel than other things he’s done, which is not to say that he’s insane or cruel all the time. He’s himself; he can be perfectly pleasant; he’s the weather system they live with . . . Don’t the three of them understand that living with him simply is what it is? To complain or resist would be as useless as complaining about or resisting a tornado. This is why . . . it’s her mother as much as her father whom Hannah faults for the upheaval.” That feeling of placating a person as temperamental and unpredictable a weather system is something I’ve experienced and this felt achingly real. Hannah also questions why her mother won’t return now. “Why is she acting like his behavior is shocking? She’s the one who taught Hannah both by example and instruction, exactly how accommodation works.” My favorite part of this section comes when Hannah imagines her father alone in the house at night—it’s hard to imagine him being angry there without them. “It must be like watching a game show by yourself,” she says, “calling out the answers feels silly and pointless.” She concludes: “What is fury without witnesses?”
The dysfunctional relationship she grew up seeing affects her ability to engage with others as she ages and especially infects the way she perceives and interacts with men. As a teen, she worries that she’s letting down her family as well as “boys and men everywhere” by being slightly overweight (though this doesn’t stop her from eating cheese and crackers in front of the sink until she starts to feel gross). There’s an uncomfortable scene where an 18-year old leers at her and, picking something out of his teeth with his tongue, offers to show her his motorcycle. Hannah wonders if she’s in danger, but almost hopefully. Later, as a college student, she finds herself riding in a car with her cousin’s ex-boyfriend and merely by dint of their proximity has to tell herself not to imagine she is 31 and he is 33 and their two kids (a 6 year old and a 4 year old) are in the back, and not to pretend they are going for the weekend to a cottage on the beach. Later still, on a date with another man she worries about the meaning of a table they were given at a restaurant: Is this a desirable table with privacy because they are young and on a first date, or an undesirable table because they’re not glamorous? All of this confusion and desperation and unease is so human.
It’s also often also very funny. When Hannah first ends up at her aunt’s house, she comments on the difference between this neighborhood, where the grass is dead and you can hear neighbors’ televisions, and her own with its Doric columns and long driveways and manicured lawns. At her aunt’s, the vibe is creepy. She describes seeing “boys on bikes pedaling in circles like in the background on TV when some well-coiffed reporter is standing in front of the crime scene where a seventy-six year old woman has been murdered”. Also at the start of the book Hannah is celebrity obsessed and is particularly interested in Julia Roberts’ aborted marriage to Kiefer Sutherland (coincidentally, I started reading this book on Roberts’ 55th birthday). Discussing Roberts, she notes that her father died of cancer when she was nine years old, “which must have been terrible unless it was a relief”. Later, her aunt says that Julia Roberts (in 1991) is still a child. Hannah objects: “Julia Roberts is not a child! She’s 23!” As somebody long past that age, Hannah’s insistence that 23 is adulthood is adorable.
Listen, here are some other things I really liked. I don’t know where to put them organically in a review, so let me just list them:
- Rory, Hannah’s cousin with Down’s syndrome, hides when his mother Elizabeth comes home. She pretends not to know where he is until he jumps out saying, “Here’s Rory!” They then fall on the couch together, her kissing his cheeks and nose. “Here’s my big handsome boy!” Elizabeth says while Rory squeals and writhes beneath her. Not only is this an adorable moment, but it is striking for how Hannah’s relationship with her parents doesn’t have this quality, and that adds a tinge of sadness to the scene.
- There’s a moment when Hannah goes to a public pool with her aunt and thinks about the difference between the pool in her neighborhood where you pay for snacks with your family name rather than using cash—this *same thing* is a big plot point in AMERICAN WIFE!
- In the middle section of the book, Hannah takes a trip to Alaska with her sister and, while kayaking, sees a glacier. The description of the experience is something I can definitely relate with: “Hannah cannot believe that this, all of this, exists. It exists while she babysits the professor’s children, while she eats frozen yogurt with Jenny in the student center on campus. Now that seems distant and irrelevant. This is the world: the clearness of the air, the wind stirring the fall grasses, the way the late-afternoon sunlight glints off the tiny waves hitting the rocks.”
- On that Alaskan trip, Hannah and her sister Allison get into an argument. Hannah has not spoken with their father in years while Allison maintains contact with him and just moments ago was trying to sell Hannah on his virtues, particularly his generosity. When the argument commenced, Allison tells Hannah she’s a miserable person who makes others around her miserable but then adds: “The irony is you remind me of Dad.” It’s such a funny thing to say because it’s meant as a dig against Hannah but she was just praising her dad a moment ago! This is another thing that I found quite relatable—my family likes to accuse me of being just like my dad even though they think I’m a heathen and he’s a saint.
- Hannah took notes about her therapy sessions (also something I do!) but re-reading them afterward, she says they “have a wispy, elusive quality when what I’d always hoped for was the snap of revelation—clarity and permanence of some official knowledge that would feel instantly true and keep feeling true from then on.” No kidding.
I guess here’s the overall: I love Sittenfeld’s writing. I’m tempted to just read the rest of her books back to back because I’m so into them. This, of the three I’ve read, is not my favorite but it *is* the one I connected with most personally. I can easily imagine that if I hadn’t lucked into a high school romance which has stood the test of time that I would be as aimless and anxious as Hannah is here. I will say the ending… I didn’t care for exactly. It wasn’t bad but it doesn’t really feel like it follows from anything that came before. Ah well, nevertheless. Everything else was great.
The three books I’ve read have all been primarily about the romantic entanglements of upper-class female protagonists; or rather, that’s what it seems to be about at a surface level, whereas in fact the stories are more about the very relatable internal clamor of anxieties, prejudices, principles and doubts that animate her characters’ actions. None of Sittenfeld’s protagonists have been fully valorous; even Hillary Rodham, who comes closest to being a hero, has an especially damning moment influenced by greed and latent racism. The nuance of Sittenfeld’s protagonists is part of what makes her work so enticing to me.
This book follows its lead Hannah Gavener from age 14 to 29, and I was all in from the very start. Hannah is staying with her aunt as the book opens, after her father “exiled” Hannah, her sister Allison, and their mother from the house. Even after things have settled, her mother won’t return. I keenly felt some of Hannah’s thoughts here. For instance, she admits her father’s actions were wrong but insists they were “not more insane or cruel than other things he’s done, which is not to say that he’s insane or cruel all the time. He’s himself; he can be perfectly pleasant; he’s the weather system they live with . . . Don’t the three of them understand that living with him simply is what it is? To complain or resist would be as useless as complaining about or resisting a tornado. This is why . . . it’s her mother as much as her father whom Hannah faults for the upheaval.” That feeling of placating a person as temperamental and unpredictable a weather system is something I’ve experienced and this felt achingly real. Hannah also questions why her mother won’t return now. “Why is she acting like his behavior is shocking? She’s the one who taught Hannah both by example and instruction, exactly how accommodation works.” My favorite part of this section comes when Hannah imagines her father alone in the house at night—it’s hard to imagine him being angry there without them. “It must be like watching a game show by yourself,” she says, “calling out the answers feels silly and pointless.” She concludes: “What is fury without witnesses?”
The dysfunctional relationship she grew up seeing affects her ability to engage with others as she ages and especially infects the way she perceives and interacts with men. As a teen, she worries that she’s letting down her family as well as “boys and men everywhere” by being slightly overweight (though this doesn’t stop her from eating cheese and crackers in front of the sink until she starts to feel gross). There’s an uncomfortable scene where an 18-year old leers at her and, picking something out of his teeth with his tongue, offers to show her his motorcycle. Hannah wonders if she’s in danger, but almost hopefully. Later, as a college student, she finds herself riding in a car with her cousin’s ex-boyfriend and merely by dint of their proximity has to tell herself not to imagine she is 31 and he is 33 and their two kids (a 6 year old and a 4 year old) are in the back, and not to pretend they are going for the weekend to a cottage on the beach. Later still, on a date with another man she worries about the meaning of a table they were given at a restaurant: Is this a desirable table with privacy because they are young and on a first date, or an undesirable table because they’re not glamorous? All of this confusion and desperation and unease is so human.
It’s also often also very funny. When Hannah first ends up at her aunt’s house, she comments on the difference between this neighborhood, where the grass is dead and you can hear neighbors’ televisions, and her own with its Doric columns and long driveways and manicured lawns. At her aunt’s, the vibe is creepy. She describes seeing “boys on bikes pedaling in circles like in the background on TV when some well-coiffed reporter is standing in front of the crime scene where a seventy-six year old woman has been murdered”. Also at the start of the book Hannah is celebrity obsessed and is particularly interested in Julia Roberts’ aborted marriage to Kiefer Sutherland (coincidentally, I started reading this book on Roberts’ 55th birthday). Discussing Roberts, she notes that her father died of cancer when she was nine years old, “which must have been terrible unless it was a relief”. Later, her aunt says that Julia Roberts (in 1991) is still a child. Hannah objects: “Julia Roberts is not a child! She’s 23!” As somebody long past that age, Hannah’s insistence that 23 is adulthood is adorable.
Listen, here are some other things I really liked. I don’t know where to put them organically in a review, so let me just list them:
- Rory, Hannah’s cousin with Down’s syndrome, hides when his mother Elizabeth comes home. She pretends not to know where he is until he jumps out saying, “Here’s Rory!” They then fall on the couch together, her kissing his cheeks and nose. “Here’s my big handsome boy!” Elizabeth says while Rory squeals and writhes beneath her. Not only is this an adorable moment, but it is striking for how Hannah’s relationship with her parents doesn’t have this quality, and that adds a tinge of sadness to the scene.
- There’s a moment when Hannah goes to a public pool with her aunt and thinks about the difference between the pool in her neighborhood where you pay for snacks with your family name rather than using cash—this *same thing* is a big plot point in AMERICAN WIFE!
- In the middle section of the book, Hannah takes a trip to Alaska with her sister and, while kayaking, sees a glacier. The description of the experience is something I can definitely relate with: “Hannah cannot believe that this, all of this, exists. It exists while she babysits the professor’s children, while she eats frozen yogurt with Jenny in the student center on campus. Now that seems distant and irrelevant. This is the world: the clearness of the air, the wind stirring the fall grasses, the way the late-afternoon sunlight glints off the tiny waves hitting the rocks.”
- On that Alaskan trip, Hannah and her sister Allison get into an argument. Hannah has not spoken with their father in years while Allison maintains contact with him and just moments ago was trying to sell Hannah on his virtues, particularly his generosity. When the argument commenced, Allison tells Hannah she’s a miserable person who makes others around her miserable but then adds: “The irony is you remind me of Dad.” It’s such a funny thing to say because it’s meant as a dig against Hannah but she was just praising her dad a moment ago! This is another thing that I found quite relatable—my family likes to accuse me of being just like my dad even though they think I’m a heathen and he’s a saint.
- Hannah took notes about her therapy sessions (also something I do!) but re-reading them afterward, she says they “have a wispy, elusive quality when what I’d always hoped for was the snap of revelation—clarity and permanence of some official knowledge that would feel instantly true and keep feeling true from then on.” No kidding.
I guess here’s the overall: I love Sittenfeld’s writing. I’m tempted to just read the rest of her books back to back because I’m so into them. This, of the three I’ve read, is not my favorite but it *is* the one I connected with most personally. I can easily imagine that if I hadn’t lucked into a high school romance which has stood the test of time that I would be as aimless and anxious as Hannah is here. I will say the ending… I didn’t care for exactly. It wasn’t bad but it doesn’t really feel like it follows from anything that came before. Ah well, nevertheless. Everything else was great.
julibug86's review against another edition
2.0
Really didn't care for this despite being a fan of Sittenfeld's previous works ("Prep" and "The American Wife"). Just seemed a little lackluster and without a point. I guess in the end she learns to love herself and come to terms with her social anxiety (or is she mildly autistic? I was vague on this). Also, the title seemed misleading.
beths__bookshelf's review against another edition
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
jude_hoo's review against another edition
5.0
For me, a Curtis Sittenfeld book is one to be savoured and it is for this reason that I've had this book sitting on my shelf for years before finally cracking the cover and devouring the whole thing in the space of a few days.
Hannah does have a lot in common with Lee from Prep, and I can understand why that doesn't appeal to a lot of people. She's awkward, shy, and sometimes unpleasant. Her thoughts and feelings often reflect that she isn't thinking or feeling the things she thinks she should be questioning why she is the way she is and not a more beautiful, easy-going social butterfly. She is the source of a lot of her own problems and shoots herself in the foot time and time again. It can be uncomfortable to read, and for me, a lot of Hannah's weird thoughts and worries hit very close to home. Perhaps that is why I think of her as lovable and interesting where so many find her tirelessly annoying.
Where Prep and American Wife both tell relatively straightforward stories - the life stories of their protagonists, The Man of my Dreams is more experimental, following Hannah's story only in flashes, and only watching how her thoughts about romantic and sexual relationships changes as she grows from a young girl to a 28-year-old woman. You do see other things happening in her life and with her family, but her focus is solidly on relationships and I found this really interesting.
Hannah does have a lot in common with Lee from Prep, and I can understand why that doesn't appeal to a lot of people. She's awkward, shy, and sometimes unpleasant. Her thoughts and feelings often reflect that she isn't thinking or feeling the things she thinks she should be questioning why she is the way she is and not a more beautiful, easy-going social butterfly. She is the source of a lot of her own problems and shoots herself in the foot time and time again. It can be uncomfortable to read, and for me, a lot of Hannah's weird thoughts and worries hit very close to home. Perhaps that is why I think of her as lovable and interesting where so many find her tirelessly annoying.
Where Prep and American Wife both tell relatively straightforward stories - the life stories of their protagonists, The Man of my Dreams is more experimental, following Hannah's story only in flashes, and only watching how her thoughts about romantic and sexual relationships changes as she grows from a young girl to a 28-year-old woman. You do see other things happening in her life and with her family, but her focus is solidly on relationships and I found this really interesting.
rw444's review against another edition
4.0
I read Prep a long time ago, and American Wife right before this. Despite the schlocky title and precious looking cover, it was a skillfully written book. Sittenfeld tends to write characters who are quiet, thoughtful, and not terribly dramatic in their words or actions. That may turn people off who want tantrums and hot sex scenes or whatnot, but I find her characters refreshingly normal and interesting in their normality and quiet struggles.
This book takes a look at Hannah, an insecure, quiet, dreamy, depressive, mixed-up woman, starting with her teenage years and taking her through her twenties. We see her grow, make mistakes, experience new people and places, and come to find some peace with herself and her life. Even though she was unlikable at times, frustratingly obtuse and unrealistic in her expectations, Hannah was real to me, and I could relate to her years as a depressed college student and her fumbling attempts at adulthood. The people in your life disappoint you, and you disappoint them. We all have to try, fail, and out of that we grow and become who we are. It was an honest portrayal of that struggle, and I enjoyed seeing her through to the beginning of her more realized self.
This book takes a look at Hannah, an insecure, quiet, dreamy, depressive, mixed-up woman, starting with her teenage years and taking her through her twenties. We see her grow, make mistakes, experience new people and places, and come to find some peace with herself and her life. Even though she was unlikable at times, frustratingly obtuse and unrealistic in her expectations, Hannah was real to me, and I could relate to her years as a depressed college student and her fumbling attempts at adulthood. The people in your life disappoint you, and you disappoint them. We all have to try, fail, and out of that we grow and become who we are. It was an honest portrayal of that struggle, and I enjoyed seeing her through to the beginning of her more realized self.