44 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage - Sascha Rothchild (Plume), March 25, 2010
This review is from: How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage (Paperback)
Something's fishy here. First off, the book itself. `How to Get Divorced by 30'' began life as an article in the Los Angeles alternative paper, the L.A. Weekly. It has since been optioned by Universal Pictures to (possibly) become a feature film. Fair enough; the saucy title alone is enough from which to build a fun, chick-flick/rom-com that could last a couple of weekends in the mall (assuming the studio covers their bet by putting actual comedy writers on the project who can exorcise this painfully drab story out of their script.) But the middle piece - the book itself - dreadful.
For some reason, Rothchild (and her publisher) thought her twenty-something life's story was interesting enough to foist 224 pages onto the general public during the fallow first quarter. It is not. (It appears that the movie option was already in place, as the book would clearly be a `pass' without it.) Her story, the story of a writer of limited accomplishment, moving to LA to `make it,' and turning a loser boyfriend into a loser husband is about as exciting as the `marriage' of the half-filled ketchup bottles Rothchild merges while waiting tables at the Palm. (A mundane procedure, she actually feels obligated to explain.)
After a handful of uninspired relationships lead her to Jeff, a curmudgeonly wannabe actor/bartender whose life seems to revolve around living in his La-Z-Boy recliner, playing video games and smoking pot all day, it is shocking that Rothchild both marries him and then is somehow surprised that the obviously ill-fated unison ends in divorce. (This, despite the fact that she has to buy her own engagement ring at the mall, is married by a guy who got his certificate off the internet and hopes Jeff wears his 'good jeans' on their wedding day!) It would be hard to imagine a reader out there who shares her surprise as anyone with a pulse could see this coming from deep left-field.
This quick read, gallivants (one of her favorite words, she uses it more than once in the book) back and forth to work with the author, questions whether she should have ended up with a previous boyfriend or two instead, and generally covers the quotidian lifestyle of a young Valley couple whose greatest life-changing event is the day they get a flat-screen TV.
And let's not forget the part where after sixteen years, she decides to try cocaine again just to see if 'she is addicted.' WTF? The fact that this white-trash wedding story is completely banal is bad enough. The continuation of that thinking (that anyone would want to actually read about it) only serves to underscore the basic problem; that Ms. Rothchild lacks the maturity to realize she has nothing interesting to offer here.
The most curious part are the online reviews. While there are a number of negative ones, suspiciously most of the Amazon reviews are five-star and all posted the same week by people who have few, if any, other reviews posted and appear to live in cities the author formerly called home. (A common amateur sign of insider reviews.) Of course, they claim the book is hilarious, scintillating and well-written and many can't wait for her next volume (ahem...).
Unfortunately, with an Amazon sales ranking at nearly 400,000, this is more like landfill waiting to happen. Let's see if a movie ever gets made, and if so, who the real writers are. One word: Fail.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read it in one sitting., February 15, 2010
This review is from: How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage (Paperback)
You don't have to have been married to recognize a lot of the relationship tropes and dynamics that Sascha Rothchild deftly parses in this highly entertaining read. It could almost be subtitled "The Stupid [...] People Do In Their Twenties" -- even if you haven't shared the writer's journey, or wouldn't have always made the same choices, you will find familiar people, mistakes, and small triumphs in this book. Looking forward to more.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Catcher in the Rye for the Stand Up Comedy Gen, January 26, 2010
This review is from: How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage (Paperback)
Way more than a divorce memoir, this book is about growing up the child of Generation Counter Culture Parents in the '80s-90s multicultural, media saturated, Bi-Coastal USA. Rothchild captures the kaleidoscope of parental, social and generational ideas that must get sorted through to finally become your own person.
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