Back in the old days, before the term “blended families” had taken hold and those living in them knew what they were, the only pop culture example we had to show what it was like to throw stepchildren together under one roof was “The Brady Bunch.”
Of course, in the early 1970s, with television networks still skittish about divorce, Mike and Carol Brady’s first spouses were out of the picture. They were dead.
Oh, to be so lucky.
So it goes in the forced smile, drop-off-and-pick-up world of divorced families created by Laura Ruby in her new short-story collection, “I’m Not Julia Roberts.”
The book’s title comes from an episode in which one of the characters, Lu, new wife to Ward, is kicked off an Internet bulletin board for second wives for daring to suggest not everyone is as wild about their stepchildren as Julia Roberts appeared to be in the movie “Stepmom.”
While billed as a comedy – and, in fact, the writing is breezy and clever – there is a bite that often makes it painful.
Ruby breaks from traditional narrative of using one central character. Instead, she employs a large cast of interconnected characters to tell a story of blended families. Ruby even provides a cheat sheet at the front of the book to help sort out who was once married to whom, spawning which children, and who is now dating or married to whose ex.
If this all sounds confusing that’s the point.
Divorce is confusing. And messy.
By current estimate about half of all first marriages will end in divorce. The legal wrangling will take about a year and cost upward of $15,000. Still, most will marry again, and those with kids tend to remarry more quickly.
But trying to put families back together in a new form is never easy. In fact, more than 60 percent of second marriages will also end in divorce.
In one especially telling story, Ruby exposes the disintegration of one marriage, the birth of a new relationship and the gradual disillusionment of wife No. 2 solely through a series of e-mails, letters and Internet postings that go backward through time. It is a brilliant device and, frankly, chilling.
And that is the one weakness of the book. Ruby’s dedication to not sugarcoating the disappointments and pettiness of her characters at first make them relatable, but over time distances them from readers. The glibness becomes wearisome.
Then when Ruby does a sudden about-face to show how it can all work out after all, it feels jarring and false.
Still, there is a been-there-done- that aspect to the book that will surely ring true to anyone who has.
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I’m Not Julia Roberts
By Laura Ruby
Warner, 251 pages, $23.99
