Overall, I would rate the book as predictable chick-lit. The characters are maybe different than standard fare- she's an American lit professor at a New York university, not-yet-tenured, and clashing increasingly with a colleague in the department- but meeting The Guy is inevitable.

What I liked most about this book was the feminist-intellectual perspective on something as commonplace as love. She's her own person, she doesn't need a man, she has important career considerations to think about. But when the right man comes along? Priorities shift, her perspective changes, and she's forced to reexamine her conclusions about relationships and the attainability of happiness.

I love the way this woman writes! Don’t always understand it, but in the two books I’ve read (this and The Weight of Ink) I find her characters and their experiences solid and real. I may not always like their decisions or behavior, but I believe them. Even the minor characters have depth. Hard book to put down from beginning to end.

The "lie" that Tolstoy allegedly told, which gives this novel its title, is the famous first sentence of "Anna Karenina": "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Rachel Kadish, in setting out to disprove this obviously false statement, declares her aim of writing a book that takes happiness and love seriously. Her heroine, Tracy Farber, states the thesis on page 160 (it's also the thesis of an ambitious academic study Tracy aims to write):
"It's as if our whole literary tradition, which has been unsparing on the subjects of death, war, poverty, et cetera, has agreed to keep the gloves on where happiness is concerned. And no-one has addressed it. I mean, shame on us all -- readers, critics, writers. Anyone who tries to take happiness seriously is belittled. The writers who pen happy endings risk getting labeled 'regionalists' which is like a paternal pat on the head and a nudge back to the children's table. Or worse, they're called 'romance writers' -- the literary world's worst insult."

These words speak strongly to me because I too have written a book that tries to address love seriously. It's called 'Romance Language' and will be published in October 2009 by Portals Press.

So besides a basic romantic story, there are tidbits of feminism and friendship. The writing is what really distinguishes this book, complete with literary references and quotes from Shakespeare when appropriate. The setting in the English department of a NY university is also intriguing.

I love that Rachel Kadish writes books about women who don’t show up in fiction much. The academic drama in this is spot on, at times exhaustingly so, and I didn’t figure out the reveal ahead of time. Not for everyone, but well-done.

The author's "the Weight of Ink" was brilliant. This is not in the same field.

Despite her investment in feminist literary criticism, Kadish succumbs to the trope of the magical black man in this waste of a novel.

lecture agréable mais avec quelques passages un peu long

"Feminism taught me how to critique the world; it didn't teach me how to live in it." So reflects the main character in this beautifully written, thoughtful book about how love changes people, whether they like it or not. A really wonderful read.

The main character likes sweeping theories that encompass life, love, etc. I identify strongly! An interesting exploration of what happiness looks like...

From the back cover: "When love proves more complicated than Tracy had imagined, she struggles to find happiness in a way that fulfills both her head and her heart."

While I enjoyed the book overall, I found the main character to be annoying and pretentious. It also seemed to drag on, and I was forcing myself to get to the end rather than feeling excited to find out how it ends. I most likely wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. Not the worst, but not impressive.

The main character is a university professor, of literature. OK, you've already got me, I'll read it. Plus I've read another novel by Kadish and I know she writes in a way that pleases me. So, it's well written, it's about university and intellectual life (something that still makes me curious), it's a love story and a work conflict story. I really enjoyed it.