Outtakes from a Marriage

A Novel

By: Ann Leary

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

Julia and Joe Ferraro are living the good life in Manhattan now that Joe's finally made it; he's the star of a hit TV show and has just been nominated for a Golden Globe award. After many lean years, they've got a grand Upper West Side apartment and an Amagansett beach house, and their two kids go to elite private schools. Even better, Julia and Joe are still madly in love.

Or so Julia thinks, until the fateful evening when she accidentally hears a voice mail on Joe's phone - a message left by a sultry-sounding woman who clearly isn't just a friend.

Suddenly, Julia is in a tailspin, compulsively checking Joe's messages, stalking him in cyberspace, and showing up unannounced on his sets, wondering all along if she should confront him. Julia's search forces her to consider the possibility that in the long process of helping Joe become something, she has become a bit of a "nothing", as her daughter once described her to her class on career day. A big husband-stalking nothing.

When Julia and Joe first met, she was an edgy East Village girl who wrote music reviews for the Village Voice and threw famed parties in a gritty downtown loft with her friends. Joe was a shy, awkward drama student who followed her around like a lovesick spaniel. After he won her heart, Julia helped Joe evolve into a roguishly handsome charmer who became increasingly obsessed with his looks and his career. Julia, meanwhile, settled into doting motherhood and a new life of comfy clothes and parenting associations.

Now, faced with the looming awards show and the possibility of a destroyed marriage, Julia embarks on an accelerated self-improvement routine.

A unique take on the perennially popular issue of women trying not to lose themselves in matrimony and motherhood, Outtakes from a Marriage is expertly and humorously set against the Manhattan preschool mafia, the Hollywood machine, and the ticking clock of a waiting red carpet.

©2008 Ann Leary (P)2008 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"The prose is sprightly ... you'll keep reading." ( Entertainment Weekly)

Disappointment in Details

I loved Ann Leary's Good House. It had great character development and a good old-fashioned plot line. Human flaws mixed in with everyday-life kind of complications.

I was hoping for the same in Outtakes.

But the plot, which revolves around a suspicious wife finding that her husband may be having an affair never rings true. There is too much unbelievable low key angst, when most wives would go ballistic. The technology available is never used to find more about the suspicion.

And there are waaaay too many flashbacks to family scene recollections that do nothing but pad the book and do not contribute to the plot at all except top let you know she had a nice family life at one point.

I like Leary's writing. But I didn't get enough out of this book to recommend it. I will try another Leary book in the future. Everybody deserves a stumble now and then, after all.

Thought it would be better....

I had high hopes for this book from positive reviews...but it was just lame - thankfully it was short so I didn't feel too bad wasting my time or money on it - take a pass on this one -