Unhappily Ever After

The story is told in four chapters or "books." The first book is an autobiography, begun when Rachel is expecting her first child. It starts with Rachel's tomboy childhood in Santa Monica, California, moves on to the development of a tight circle of girlfriends in junior high and high school and the angst and the sexual experimentation of teen-dom. As in real life, the first book surrounds Rachel not just with her girlfriends but with parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, each of whose stories is an element in Rachel's own story.

After entering the University of Colorado to room with her cousin, Yalie Goodman, Rachel is expelled following a drunk driving accident. She undergoes several months of difficult community service back in the Los Angeles area. Then she reenters college as a beginning freshman at UCLA and the following year is permitted by her parents to transfer to the University of California at Berkeley. There she pursues her goal of becoming a journalist and meets the young man, JJ Weiner, whom she will marry.

But the marriage will not take place until JJ completes his law degree and obtains an MBA. Meanwhile, he insists that Rachel complete her senior year at Berkeley, return to her hometown and begin her career. He also refuses to have sex with her until they are married, adding up to more than two years of frustration and bafflement for Rachel. Unwillingly, Rachel accepts JJ's edict because she is not strong enough to stand up to him.

It is not until after they are engaged that Rachel realizes that JJ comes from an extremely wealthy family and that their life together in Colorado will be luxurious, but also restrictive. Although she intends to keep her name, her identity will depend on him, not on her own achievements. Following the birth relatively early in the marriage of their first child, Rachel, at her husband's suggestion, goes to work at a local magazine and soon carves out a place for herself, building a reputation for tackling challenging issues.

However, a miscarriage and the difficult birth of her second child mire Rachel in post-partum depression. She is just beginning to regain her footing when she experiences the trauma that forever changes her life. The trauma is described in the present tense in the second book. That is, it is taking place in real time while it's being read.

The third and fourth books are told in the familiar third person past tense. The two books cover Rachel's efforts to overcome the emotional consequences of her experience, partly with professional help but also with the support of a cousin, Dev Goodman, who lives nearby in Denver, and Jessica Sherman, a rock-solid girlfriend back home in Santa Monica, California. As her young relatives begin to experience professional success, Rachel feels left behind, a damaged person who has retreated to academia to avoid real life in which she considers herself a failure as a mother and wife.

Over a period of almost four years, ever reliant on her cousin and girlfriend, Rachel begins to understand the underlying source of her discontent, which has roots extending beyond her trauma. Unexpected developments accumulate and eventually explode into a crisis leading to a startling denouement.

This is an ambitious novel with a large cast of characters