A review by georgiaonyrmnd
Long Division by Jane Berentson
4.0
Maybe not quite a full four stars, but I did really enjoy this read. Annie Harper is a snappy, quirky third grade teacher who decides to write a memoir of the year her boyfriend David is deployed to Iraq.
Over the course of the year she struggles with missing David and then with not missing him enough and trying to figure out what it means to keep the home fires burning and keep moving forward with life. For Annie, that means teaching an adorable and active bunch of third graders, adopting a pet chicken, befriending an elderly woman, and spending time with her equally quirky best friend Gus.
Sometimes the writing was little too slick and witty but mostly I enjoyed Annie’s voice. She goes through a lot in a year —love, guilt, self-loathing, grief, simple joy...the gamut. And the story is hilarious, heartbreaking, and honest. It’s definitely a book of the early oughts (at one point a character asks if Annie has a VCR), which was kind of great.
Over the course of the year she struggles with missing David and then with not missing him enough and trying to figure out what it means to keep the home fires burning and keep moving forward with life. For Annie, that means teaching an adorable and active bunch of third graders, adopting a pet chicken, befriending an elderly woman, and spending time with her equally quirky best friend Gus.
Sometimes the writing was little too slick and witty but mostly I enjoyed Annie’s voice. She goes through a lot in a year —love, guilt, self-loathing, grief, simple joy...the gamut. And the story is hilarious, heartbreaking, and honest. It’s definitely a book of the early oughts (at one point a character asks if Annie has a VCR), which was kind of great.