No One Could Have Guessed The Weather Free Preview (NULL) (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
How can a meteorologist resist a novel with weather in the title?I feel like the remaining reading public should give first authors a chance. I did and didn't feel like reading further after the first 50 pages. After reading Bayard, I decided to skim the rest and slow down if there was something further worth reading. I didn't find anything.The author's in Dublin. The characters, places and situations don't ring true. And we don't guess the weather. We have satellites and supercomputers to help us predict the weather. This was a really interesting book basically about four women's quests to find themselves as middle aged people who were confused as to how they got that far in life. My favorite character Lucy was a perfect suburban house wife in London, that is until her husband lost his job and they moved to the heart of New York City and lived in a cramped apartment. However, during this time of financially "downgrading", her relationship with her husband and children upgrades into something beautiful, and she is thankful for losing all of her possessions because she falls back in love with her children and husband.The other characters are complex, troubled, and sometimes I honestly cannot comprehend how the author fit everything into a book that really isn't that long.One woman named Christy, married a man who was 30 years older than her (and millions of dollars richer), and somehow her daughters are more mentally mature than her. She has an emotional affair with the attractive Irish doorman who works at her apartment complex. She then begins to find her groove caring for the kids, dumps the Irish doorman, and her almost elderly husband has a heart attack. In the end her husband lives and she gets pregnant again. Then there is Julia, she brings the three main female characters together, first by being best friends with Christy, then introducing her to Lucy. She is the most interesting character sometimes, even thought she is pretty far from complex; loud, sassy, and crazy focused on work. She leaves her family for her job, but when she spends more time with her friends who have strong relationships with their kids, she returns to her family by the middle of the book. Lastly there is this lady Robyn who has two kids and a really immature husband. None of the other mothers really likes her, and she is really frustrated at her husband, so she secretly sleeps around with the husbands at the school. She ends up divorcing her husband and marrying a rich man. My main observation was that Robyn was an annoying character. These four stories intertwine near the middle of the book when they all go to a weird horse camp together, and have an emotional encounter with themselves as a group. However that psychological horse camp highlighted the improvements and choices they needed to make in their lives. The struggles of the women got pretty dragged out when there were really simple answers. All in all, I think that this book was good, but at some points it was too dramatic to the point of being silly. Maybe I shouldn't understand yet, because I have not gone through a mid-life-crisis. The story wrapped up better than I thought it would, and I think the book was a very interesting depiction of the midlife crisis.
What do You think about No One Could Have Guessed The Weather Free Preview (NULL) (2013)?
If bounced around a lot and at times it was hard to remember everyone.
—illisha
More early Jane Greene than Melissa Senate. Somewhat bleak.
—Robert
