(this review is also posted on my Blog)I wasn't going to review this book, but then remembered that I pinky swore to keep things real and honest. Here it goes.This was a book club choice by a gentleman who belongs to the group. I can't tell you much about him as it was my first time attending the Books & Beer group. He gave a lively description of the book to the group and promised that we would laugh out loud and love the book. In keeping true to my "get a book anywhere philosophy", I picked up this gently worn out paperback off E Bay.The premise of Getting Rid of Matthew is pretty simple. Married mad gets bored and finds a pushing middle-aged lass to entertain him a few nights a week (for 4 years!!!!). Pushing middle-aged lass impels man to leave wife. Man leaves wife and moves in with lass. Pushing middle-aged lass has almost instant buyer's remorse and the tale moves to her trying to Get Rid of Matthew. And the story unfolds from there.The yarn that is weaved by the author has some really promising bits, and a few hold your breath moments, but for the most part, the only voice I could hear was the pushing middle-aged lass's incessant whining, at least it seemed she was constantly droning on. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to love her or want to drown her. I read a few other reviews of this book, and a couple of the complaints were that it's set in London and the "language" and "setting" were difficult to grasp. It's England, not Djibouti. Spend an afternoon watching BBC or PBS, and you'll be brought up to speed fairly quickly and hanker for a chippy all at the same time.Have you ever been to Great Britain? If you go, the first thing you might notice is that it's bleak, drizzly and damp. Not every day, but many, and that was the feeling I had while reading this book - bleak, drizzly, damp. Even in some of the brighter spots of the book where one should feel happiness, I couldn't feel any warmth for any character, except for the Rabbits upstairs.Do my feelings make Getting Rid of Matthew a horrible book? Absolutely not. It just wasn't the book for me. I actually have a friend who I invited to join the book club before this book was chosen who has lived the exact life of one of the main characters. We just had a quick phone discussion and she said that her Matthew was exactly like the character Matthew! She said she felt so many of the same feelings and emotions as the characters did and she laughed out loud so many times.Me, I didn't laugh out loud, in-fact, I never really felt much emotion for any of the characters. Yes, yes, yes, there are deep, important emotions and relationships at play in this book, and the ending is a good one. I think I did a half of a Julia Roberts/Arsenio Hall "whoo" when I finished.Sometimes it's the story line in a book not the author that keeps a person from really loving a book, so I'm going to give Ms. Fallon another go, and in the near future check one of her books out of my local library. I will come back and review it, of course!
I have rated this book on the level which I enjoyed it rather than the quality of the writing. The writing is actually pretty good - except for the odd glitch where absent characters suddenly speak in conversations - but unfortunately this type of novel isn't my thing.I was given a copy for World Book Night and thought I would give it a go even though I don't usually read chic lit. It isn't badly written or anything, but I didn't like the characters, the storyline or the concept.. and I didn't find it funny. It just isn't my sense of humor but I know several people who think it was really good and amusing (presumably including the World Book Night Panel) so if you like this type of novel (funny chic lit) then its worth a go.However, for my own part I must say sorry Jane but I think it may be a fundamental flaw in my personality that if I don't like the people involved then I don't really want them to have a happy ending. In real life good things don't always happen to good people (in my experience they often get dumped on from a great height instead) and bad people often get away with murder but I prefer my fiction to create a nicer world than that- a world where people are rewarded for their actions.I definitely didn't like Helen (the mistress). I didn't like her boyfriend either (Matthew) and when I found out his ex-wife had also been his mistress, I went off her as well. The only person I had any time for was his son Leo and I definitely never ever want him to get together with someone who is a proven adulterer. There is an underlying theme of "Well, he has done it once before so of course he will cheat on you again" regarding the husband but no one seems to think the same of the women involved. The mistress gets an awful lot of stick for being the office cliche but it doesn't occur to anyone that she is just as likely to cheat for her own motives as the needy husband. She lies to his wife, her colleagues and even her family for over four years and then casually creates a web of intrigue to continue to cover up/try to fix her mistakes. She just isn't very good at it. There is some slight redemption at the end but I really don't think that's enough... not to get away with it all...surely? Perhaps this isn't a flaw in the book at all, but more that I'm not really happy with a society where adultery is treated so lightly - pretty much all the characters have broken that commandment at some point and shrugged it off. Compare this to the poor bloke in "Gone Girl" who also cheated - what was his punishment in comparison? They all really do get away with the whole thing very lightly.
What do You think about Getting Rid Of Matthew (2007)?
Genuinely funny book - maybe the funniest of the year - and my foray into the world of chick lit.Fallon does a great job of caustic one liners in her observations of people, although I am disappointed that she has ladies who where suspenders on her list of peole that she hates. She also paints the story of perhaps the least sympathtic character in fiction with her portrayal of a woman who has a four year affair with a married man, forces him to leave his wife and then promptly spends the rest of the book trying to get rid of him.Helen is well fucked up - in her late 30s, she lives in a one bedroom flat, appears to have only one friend in rachel and has been having a four year affair with a married man in his late 50s, which involves him coming round for a shag after work and then going home at 8pm.Things go from bad to worse when she puts pressure on him to leave his wife and sets in motion a series of unbelieveable but amusing events including pinning the blame for matthews affair on another helen when the women at work take the piss, making friends with Matthews wife to find out what she is like, starting a relationship with his son from a previous marriage and then desperately trying to get matthew back with his wife as he is a spineless and useless man.The jokes and observations are blackly funny and she paints an excellent picture of singleton london, including many references to quality pubs like the lamb (where the revelation is made that Elanor is Helen) and the Coal Hole in the strand.
—Ian Mapp
I am in an emotional quandary entirely of my own making. I try to stride proudly around, claiming I'll read anything once, trying to eschew the all-too-common academic trend of looking down on popular culture or books that everyone is reading. So I make sure there are one or two recently popular books on my reading list at any one time. I'm open-minded, dammit!Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
—Megan Baxter
Well, this book represented pretty much everything I hate about chick lit. Let me start by saying that I am not a fan of the genre at the best of times, so in order to be positive about any book written in it, it has to be really, really good. But this one was just really, really bad. I did finish it, as I had to read it for my book club, and although I wanted to abandon it pretty much right from the start, I persevered. That's about 7 hours of my reading life I am never going to get back.For starters, the whole book was nothing more than a big cliche. At alternating moments I though 'ah, that's copied from Bridget Jones' or 'ah, that's copied from Marion Keyes' (I mean, Helen and Rachel? Could she not have come up with different names rather than those?). Of course, the protagonist is in PR (she couldn't have worked as an actuary or anything, could she?). Of course she lived in Camden. Of course she was neurotic and frankly the most self-centred pain in the backside imaginable. It is little wonder she had lost all of her friends. She was utterly obnoxious. She lies the whole way through to get her own way and when the denouement finally arrives, of course she (undeservedly, in my opinion) gets what she wants. Ho hum - selfish cow wins again. Great.Secondly, the writing was pretty awful. On the odd occasion, the author suddenly appeared (saying things like "our Helen was feeling like this" or "But we knew that anyway, didn't we") You're either in the book or you're not. To have the authorial voice suddenly jump in was jarring and frankly, badly edited. If it was in order to try and help the reader gain a little more empathy with the main character, it didn't work.Finally, it dragged on and on. I know that these books are written to give women something to 'escape' (why do they assume that in order to escape, all women want to read about vacuous, immature, 30-something PR people lying their way through life in order to get what they want?). As such, there is a length which indicates value for money. But there was so much of the story which was just pointless and page filling. It could easily have been done and dusted in half the number of pages and I might have clawed back a few additional precious hours of my life. One star is being generous.
—NancyHelen
