Elizabeth Berg might just be my favorite author for a guaranteed, enjoyable comfort read. I may need to keep one of her books handy at all times. Her stories are true to life, her characters are relatable and I tend to fly through her books and end them with a sense of satisfaction for time well spent. This was no different.

Samantha "Sam" is sailing along in her marriage, keeping a home for her husband and Mothering her son Travis, but when her husband leaves her the boat capsizes and leaves her rather adrift. She starts to question everything in her life. After her initial shock, (and rather fun reactions....which includes a call to Martha Stewart and a shopping trip at Tiffany's) she gets busy trying to create a new life for herself and her son. She backslides some but gets quite a bit of help from her no nonsense friend Rita, "clueless" Mother and a new friend, King. Her son Travis even offers up quite a bit of 11 year old advice.....mostly, "You really are crazy!"

This is a thoughtful and often humorous look at the end of a marriage and one way of life...and all the new avenues that can open up to you if you are willing to travel them. I would imagine many women have been in the same place....or helped someone close to them through it. The story is not all feel good, but somehow you know it will end up well.

“I remove my wedding rings and put them in the jewelry box. So many others have done this. I am not the only one. I am not the only one. But here, I am the only one.”

Open House is a celebration of self-absorption, self-centeredness and self-pity in women. The book centers on a recent divorcee, Sam, who whines incessantly and feels sorry for herself. Sam reads like a misogynist’s idea of what a woman is, alternating between a nagging, vindictive shrew and an emotional, ultra-sensitive, self-pitying sad-sack who’s always one slight away from crying. Seriously, why exactly are we supposed to give a damn about this pathetic individual? There are people like this in real life and they do deserve help, of the psychiatric kind; that doesn’t mean their self-centered antics have to be celebrated or legitimized in “literature” (if an Oprah Book Club pick can count under that distinction). Talking about self-centeredness, there’s a slobbering interview with author Elizabeth Berg featured in the back of the book, in which she says “A lot of men have told me that my books help them understand their women better...”. If I thought there was even the slightest truth to the notion that most women behave like this, and not just a certain sector of Oprah-loving upper-class divorcees who feel like the world owes them something, it would be enough for me to swear off the female sex for life.

What makes the whining and self-pitying of Sam so perverse is that, by all accounts, she lives a really good life. Better than most of us do. She’s never had to work a day in her life. She lives a luxurious, upper-class lifestyle. Even after the breakdown of her marriage, she gets to keep the house, and the fact that she needs to bring in tenants to help with the pay is treated as some major life-changing development rather than the reality it is for most people. Here’s someone who has had everything handed to her on a platter in life and yet cries, whines, and never learns a goddamn thing. There are people struggling to pay their bills, people starving to death in third-world countries, people suffering with severe disabilities and mental illness, and all she can do is whine about how her divorce is the end of the world. Look, I get that divorce can be a hugely upsetting and catastrophic event in some people’s lives – my parents divorced, but they never took it as cart blanche to forgo all their responsibilities and act like immature children.

Among the litany of Sam’s offenses:

-tAfter finding a pair of her husband’s dirty boxers in the laundry, she buries her face in them and tries to inhale the scent. Then, she sews up the fly on the boxers. If you think this was some stupid spur-of-the-moment decision, to quote Sam, “With great care, I do this, with tenderness”. Oh yeah, in case that wasn’t enough: “Then I go back to the pile of laundry and get some of his fancy socks and sew the tops of them shut”.
-tDetermined to live in “elegance” following the divorce, Sam decides she will make her son freshly-squeezed orange juice...despite the fact that he doesn’t like it. When he says she doesn’t have to make it, she insists. When he asks for a glass of Tropicana from the fridge instead, she refuses. When he asks if they’re out of it, she lies and says yes. When he opens the fridge and sees the jug of juice, she dumps it down the sink. That will show the stupid kid for wanting a glass of juice.
-tSam insists on being the one to break the news to her son about the divorce. Then, she tells her son that the reason for the divorce is because his dad is self-centered and she hates him. Following this outburst, she begins to mope about her bad breath, gray hair and cellulite rather than the fact, you know, that she just horribly upset her son.
-tDeciding not to resort to vindictive pettiness, Sam goes to "Tiffanys" and charges $12,000 worth of stuff she has no need for to her husband’s credit card. She’s then shocked when her husband freezes their account and cuts her off.
-tShe eavesdrops on her son and his friend. When she hears them playing a harmless prank call on a girl in their class, she storms into the room, takes a bag of cookies from the friend and decides she will lecture her son on how to treat women properly. Prank phone calls? No. Charging $12,000 to someone else’s credit card? Sure, why not?
-tSam goes on a blind date with a man. She acts like a real floozy, kissing him in the restaurant and asking “Should we do it here? Or should we go and make out in the car with the heater turned up?” They end up back at his place, where they begin making love to each other. Midway through, she asks this man playfully, with a laugh, to stop. When he doesn’t, she tells him seriously to stop. He immediately stops. Sure, he is mean to her afterward, but he does stop. Then she goes home, tells the man who is babysitting her son as a favor that all men are assholes, and then claims she was date-raped, “Almost”. So you ask a guy to stop and he does, and that’s date-rape? You wanna try telling that to a woman has actually suffered through the trauma of date rape, Sam?
-tAfter getting a temporary week-long job literally doing nothing but sitting behind a desk and making change, Sam is offered a full-time position. She turns it down. She says she can’t commit to a full-time job. Really, what the hell else do you have to do? If you actually have the time to delicately sew the flies shut on your husband’s boxers, I think you have time for a job.
-tSam prepares a Thanksgiving dinner for herself. She mixes all the food on her plate, and when she doesn’t like the look of it, dumps all the perfectly good food down the garbage disposal. Meanwhile, somewhere out-there is a family of four starving.
-tThroughout Open House, Sam rents out rooms in her house to different tenants. If I remember correctly, at one time or another she enters each of these tenant’s rooms without their knowledge and pokes around, lies on their beds and just plain out invades their privacy.

As a final note, besides the general nastiness of Sam, I was fairly disturbed by the abundance of racist and homophobic stereotypes throughout Open House. I consider myself a fairly politically incorrect person; it takes quite a bit to offend me. However, even I was a little put off by some of the characterizations in Open House. There’s a black guy who carries a boom-box blasting rap music, a black mom begging for change on a street corner with her kid, an old Asian Laundromat owner with “tea-colored teeth” who speaks in broken English with monosyllabic phrases such as “Detective!” and “Dumb”, a flamboyantly gay hairdresser, and a teenager who is, of course, an emo. We get 241 pages about the troubles of middle-aged, upper-class, white women and you can't throw in a single minority character that isn't a stereotype straight out of the 1920's.

I thought this would be depressing and there were definitely sad parts, but it was also full of delightful snarky comments from Sam. I thought it was fantastic!

Ya know, I have nospecific explanation for loving Elizabeth Berg. I only know that after reading one of her books, I went back and read them all. And she never let me down once.

I was pleasantly surprised by this little book...as Oprah can go either way as we well know. This was a story of a 42-year-old woman whose life was turned upside down when her husband suddenly left her and her 11-year-old son. I'll be 42 this year and I have an 11-year-old son, so I could relate to the main character Samantha on many levels.

Sam was forced by circumstances to come to terms with a new life and find her true self. And she did it all with a witty, biting, honest sense of humor. She thinks all the things we want to say out loud!

The author did an amazing job painting this character as 100% human. This book made me appreciative of my simple life as wife and mother and someone who is completely loved by someone else. It made me question how I would personally respond if my life suddenly changed course.

It's a quick, enjoyable, fun little read.

The main character of this book is a little down trodden, a little mopey, and didn't show nearly enough spunk, even at the end, but still, I couldn't help but like her. Her main romantic interest is also likable, and though their romance, such as it is, did not exactly spark a fire in me, it was sweet. I also liked that neither character started out gorgeous or had a major makeover to become gorgeous.

Other than that, there's not a whole lot positive to say. The book reads as more of a chronicle of divorce than as a romance or even a novel. It feels more like a journal than anything and, like a journal, it's long on emotion and short on plot. What little plot there is is ridiculously predictable--as though the plot isn't really the point.

And I don't think it is. I think this is MEANT to read as a chronicle of a middle-aged woman with low confidence who more or less cobbles her life back together when her husband leaves her. Her heartbreak is very real, and her upswing is realistically imperfect, and while I liked the sense of realism, the book lacked sparkle. I LIKE romances/chick lit that is unrealistically positive at the end, when the main character gets to kick some ass and take some names. Here, she comes into her own a bit, but there's not enough of a character arc to make the entirely character-driven story pack much punch.

Also, I hated her best friend, who makes her feel bad about herself, a situation which is never resolved or even dealt with.

I can’t believe I waited 20 years to read this book. It’s so SATISFYING.

This could be a touching look at a woman who reinvents herself after her life falls apart or it could just feel a bit insipid. Most likely it will depend on your mood and the level of cynicism you have achieved.

This author never disappoints! At times this book made me laugh and others, reaching for a tissue! Can't wait to plow through more of her novels!

A sweet, if somewhat predictable, book. Berg reminds me of Anne Tyler with her simple everyday plot line and quirky characters. I knew where the story was going from the beginning, but it was still a pleasant enough though not an impactful read.

I did laugh when she made a reference to being glad that the elderly woman's purse did not contain at "day-timer". That reference dated the story perfectly...since any current writer would be referencing a "cell phone". My how things change and how quickly. The simpler life of the pre-9/11 world.

This is the first book I have read by Elizabeth Berg and she did not disappoint. I read through this book so quickly I didn’t even realize I was toward the end until the last chapter came up. I could read on and on about the character Samantha. She was funny and sassy. Her reactions and emotions to unplanned changes in her life were realistic and relatable. Mild sexual content and some swearing ( I think ). Can’t wait to read more books by this author.

I liked my first Elizabeth berg book so much I decided to go read a second one, and I read what I thought was a popular choice: "Open House." It was an Oprah Book Club selection, and was a bestseller. The first thing I noticed is that it is kind of dated: characters still watch movies via VHS tapes, and people still calculated long distance phone call costs. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the book felt like a historical novel in that sense. I found this book very weird: it seems like Berg couldn't decide on the tone of the book. It starts out sad and wistful, but she goes into comedic situations. And I never understood why Samantha needed borders, when it was established her husband was rich. So a lot of things confused me. But, it's very much readable and never boring. Still weird, though.