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Laura Munson had just returned from her dream vacation to Italy when her husband informed her that he didn’t love her anymore. Then he walked out the door and didn’t come back. He didn’t call. He didn’t answer his phone. He was just…gone.
Despite his bold statement, though, Laura didn’t buy it. She didn’t believe that his leaving had anything to do with her. Instead, it was a kind of midlife crisis. A cry for help from a man whose business was failing. So she decided to give him his space and wait it out.
Throughout the summer, Laura’s husband would come and go from their lives, distancing himself from his wife and children while insisting that their marriage was over. Meanwhile, she wrote about it all. The result was The Is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness, a rambling memoir that’s unlikely to bring happiness to its readers.
Though it seems to promise an inspiring story about healing a troubled marriage—or maybe about finding happiness in the midst of hardship—This Is Not is mostly a journal of observations, philosophies, and Munson’s own life story. And Munson does not make an inspiring heroine. In fact, she freely admits that she might not be the most likeable of characters. She claims that she doesn’t want to sound like a “poor little rich girl.” She even calls the young versions of herself and her husband “pretentious idiots.” And that’s exactly how she comes off.
Raised on Chicago’s wealthy North Shore by a loving and supportive family, she and her husband (who came from an equally-prestigious part of New York) decided to shun their upbringing and set out on their own adventure. She talks about slumming it in Boston, working blue-collar jobs, and following an opportunity to Montana as if they were quaint little bourgeois adventures. And now, in a time when millions of people are struggling to survive, it’s hard to feel sorry for a former debutante whose greatest fear seems to be having to leave her beloved granite counters and hardwood floors and her 20-acre yard in Montana and return to her family’s life of privilege in Chicago. It’s a life that she thinks is way beneath her—yet one that others only dream of.
Then, after spending half of the book writing about herself, her father, and the history of her relationship with her husband, she finally gets to the marital stuff. Then, unfortunately, it only gets even more maddening.
Granted, somewhere in here, there’s a point to be made. There’s a message about supporting your spouse when he or she is going through a difficult time—about not playing the victim, I suppose—but the way Munson goes about it is extremely frustrating. While quoting her therapist—or her favorite mystical poets and philosophers—she allows her husband to behave like a child, shirking his responsibilities as a father to their two children while verbally abusing her in front of them. Still, at the same time, while he’s supposedly upset about not being able to support his family (and worried about losing their home), she chooses that time to use her money to follow her own dreams—like a month-long trip to Italy with her daughter. It all seems so hypocritical—trying to be supportive by enabling his behavior, yet adding to his financial stress by spending extra money on her own dreams.
So, yes…this is not the story you think it is. It’s not uplifting or inspiring. It’s pretentious and altogether frustrating. For the sake of your own marriage, skip it—because your aggravation with Munson and her story will only rub off on your spouse.
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