Atlas of Love, by Laurie Frankel
Jenny at Teach Your Baby to Read did a PNW authors festival recently, and asked me if I'd read
Atlas of Love (the link is to her excellent review). I'd never heard of it, but the plot intrigued me and I promptly ILLed it.
We have three grad students in literature who are best friends as they study and teach at a university in Seattle. When Jill becomes unexpectedly pregnant and her much-younger boyfriend disappears, the three women decide to move in together, make a family, and raise a baby while earning their Ph.D's.
I really enjoyed about 75% of this book. There was lots of good writing about the nature of love and family. I got attached to several of the characters, the plot kept me hanging on, I felt for the narrator--I could hardly put it down. Some bits were very funny and yet real at the same time. Overall, the book is pretty great.
(The rest of my review here is a little ranty and over-long. You may skip this bit: )
But. One of the three friends, Katie, is billed as a Mormon, and there is quite a lot about her character that really did not convince me. Katie is a Mormon feminist academic (Victorianist, woo)--fine. I have known lots of those; in fact I've been one. Katie goes on lots of dates with LDS guys and would quite like to get married--fine. She is a returned missionary who served in Guatemala--excellent. (The bit where she gets diagnosed with Guatemalan parasites is one of my favorite parts of the book.)
Most of Katie's behavior, though, is very strange. This is all supposed to be behavior-that-is-strange-to-outsiders-but-makes-sense-to-Mormons, but if I knew a real-life woman like Katie, I would think she was
unhinged. She is desperate to get married, and spends a lot of the book figuring things out that most people figure out at about 19--such as that asking a non-LDS person to convert just for you is a Super-Bad Idea and that desperation to get married is a good reason to not do it. Most of the Mormon feminist academics I've known were
not desperate to get married and a bit wary about the whole thing, since it's kind of a big commitment and all.
For some reason it's hard for Katie to find an LDS guy who can deal with the fact that she's an academic who reads books, which is kind of mysterious to me as they are not a rare breed. She does find a boy--and gets engaged after a week and starts planning a wedding for a month away. Now some people do get engaged quickly, but a week is
crazy. Some people plan a fast wedding, but a month--after knowing the guy for a week--is really super-crazy. (She's right that Mormons are geniuses at throwing great weddings on short notice. But the timing has been exaggerated to the point of insanity.)
Most bizarre of all, Katie and her fiance decide to get married in a backyard so that all their close friends can attend. Now the plot of the novel requires that all the characters treat each other like family and therefore the author wants them all at the wedding, but this is
jaw-droppingly, insanely unrealistic. Katie just tosses it off as no big deal--"Oh, we decided to get married in the backyard so you can all come and we won't have to go to Utah to the temple, and squee, I'm getting married for time and all eternity!" Uh, no you're not, Katie, and you would know that if you were a real person. Also, there's a temple in Seattle--there has been for 30+ years now. Also,
what? It would take a long time to explain all the things that are wrong with this scenario, but I've run out of energy and I'm sure you've run out of patience.
I suspect that the author thought she knew more about Mormons than she actually did. But the REST of the book is pretty good, so don't let that stop you from reading and enjoying it as long as you remember that Katie is not a real person.