51. Happiness Sold Separately

Happiness Sold Separately was good, but depressing. I liked the characters, and the story was definitely well written, but it's definitely not for someone like me who enjoys happily ever after, or better yet, closer. Unless I missed something, the end just leaves everything up in the air. And I don't like that!

Here's the B&N description:

Corporate lawyer Elinor Mackey, now 40, wonders why she didn't try to have kids earlier. She and podiatrist husband Ted have only been married three years, but children, despite repeated IVF treatments, seem to be elusive. She funnels her sadness and fears into doing laundry. He responds to her withdrawal with frustration and by going to the gym, where he meets and eventually beds fitness instructor Gina. Elinor discovers the affair early on in this sophomore effort from Winston (Good Grief). It's where the couple go from there that captivates and engages the reader. The Mackeys even try to recover, but Gina's belligerent ten-year-old son, Toby, meets Ted and wants him for his math tutor. Ted loves his wife, but he can't stop thinking about having sex with Gina. Where does this leave Elinor? Finding solace under the diseased oak on her front lawn. "Ted's dating a ten-year-old," she says to neighbor Kat. "Fine. I'm dating a tree." Elinor, Ted, and Gina are well-drawn characters whose responses are intensely felt and perversely funny in Winston's bittersweet evocation of life's possibilities and disappointments and the slippery slope of being in love.