The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg

I am a bit conflicted on this one.  So really, 3.5 stars.

At first I was like - YES!  A journal-ed story about a woman (like me) over 50 (like me) who feels a bit lost from her younger self (like me sometimes) who has a grown daughter (like me) and who runs away and just drives off on a road trip by herself with no warning to her husband.

Wait, what?

Now, the writing here is stellar.  Very lyrical, and heartfelt and brutally honest as only a woman can be about herself and her life when she is writing in her journal.  She also writes letters to her husband to assure him she hasn't left HIM, she just needed to go explore and get away and find herself.  I was with her until about half way through (plus I kept thinking, where is your cell phone???).

Half way through I felt like she was just whining.  She starts telling her husband in her letters what she really wants in life, and how he should get ready for when she comes home.  She is very sure of herself that he will still be there waiting when she does decide she is ready to go home, and she is very bossy.  And while I certainly connected with her feelings of sometimes being invisible and always on someone else's schedule, never her own, I really lost my sympathy for her as well.  This is a short novel, and I think it would have been interesting to have a bit of the husband's perspective.  He gets a good bashing here - but it is all about how he doesn't notice her, the real her  - which she herself has admitted she has lost as well.  So how is he supposed to notice what is no longer being shown??  And seriously, how many husbands would truly appreciate all those letters when you LEFT HIM??  If he is still there, she better hope he didn't change the locks.

Now, if I am also brutally honest - how WONDERFUL would it be to actually do what this woman did?  She just got in the car and drove.  Stayed where she wanted to stay, ate when and where she wanted to eat, stopped and talked to random people - just because she could.  She actually made the pipe dream happen.  She took control of the remote, so to speak.  She traveled with the best travel buddy ever - herself.  Maybe I am just jealous.  Women get like that when they look over the fence at that grass for too long.  And in the end, our yard is just fine, thank you.  Because I made it myself.

Not that my husband noticed.  ;-)