From Publishers Weekly
"So, I figured, what the hell." That's Julia's response to just about anything, including marriage, pregnancy and cheating on her husband—not necessarily in that order. In this wry, brutally honest debut novel, Guterson slashes into the happy homilies of chick lit, revealing the underside of happily ever after. Part-time middle-school teacher Julia is nearing 40 and married to more-or-less satisfactory Jim, a Seattle sports writer, with whom she has a 15-year-old son, Chad. For years, she's been pining away for her first love, Ray, and when she sees him at a wedding—"looking for all the world like a sun-drenched god"—she promptly follows him into the bathroom. Soon she's pregnant, and she can't be sure whether the father is Jim or Ray. Meanwhile, clueless Jim is distracted by a painfully obvious crush on his young, beautiful officemate Patricia, which prevents him from taking the moral high ground. What distinguishes this book from its genre counterparts is author Guterson's unabashed willingness to let Julia voice the sort of thoughts that are publicly eschewed, and these glimpses into the mind of her tell-it-like-it-is narrator make for some liberating, laugh-out– loud passages. There are also moments of heartbreak and kindness—particularly in Julia's relationship with Chad—which are all the more potent for their understatement. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Amy Tan, author of The Opposite of Fate
A real winner. What a voice: laugh-aloud hilarious, full of naked truth.
Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club
...Mary Guterson is witty, wily, and wonderful.
Kaye Gibbons, author of Divining Women
A gracefully imagined and bluntly expressed novel, a rare combination. It speaks directly to the heart about the heart...
Robert Cohen, author of Inspired Sleep
A brisk and irreverent romp through the panic fields of contemporary marriage. Mary Guterson is wickedly, bruisingly funny.
PW Daily, January 13, 2005
We Are All Fine Here was written...by a woman who pays attention to nuance. Desperate Housewives eat your heart out.
Booklist, January 1 & 15, 2005
Mary Guterson's first novel is a short and funny read, and describes an aging married woman's anomie.
Book Description
A thoroughly irresistible debut novel about a discontented woman (married, with a teenage son, and fast approaching middle age) who dallies in her past-with startling, humorous, and bittersweet consequences.
Julia has been married to Jim for fifteen years, but she has never really stopped thinking about the man who came before: Ray, the love of her life. Pushing forty, trapped in a job she doesn't care for, growing ever more distant from her son, and fed up with her husband's flirtation with a much younger coworker, Julia accompanies Ray to a wedding of friends and has a quick tryst in the bathroom. Several weeks later, she learns she's pregnant, and because she's also recently slept with Jim-a rare event of late-she can't be quite certain of the baby's paternity.
How Julia deals with this knotty problem (and with her prickly mother, her childless sister, her best friend, her husband's family, not to mention all the men in her life) is the core of this laugh-out-loud and wholly recognizable, unforgettable, and intelligent swift gulp of a novel-which also delivers unexpected heart.
About the Author
This is Mary Guterson's first novel.
We Are All Fine Here FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Julia has been married to Jim for fifteen years, and admittedly, the thrill is mostly gone. So it's no big surprise that, like so many women in her position, she finds herself thinking a bit too much about the one who got away - in Julia's case, the one in question is Ray, the rugged, impulsive lover of her college years." "Now pushing forty, trapped in a job she doesn't care about, growing ever more distant from her son, and fed up with her husband's flirtatiousness with a much younger co-worker, Julia agrees to accompany Ray to a wedding of friends - and the day, somehow, ends with a quick tryst in the guest bathroom." Several weeks later, Julia learns she's pregnant, and because she's also recently slept with Jim - a rare event of late - she can't be quite certain of the baby's paternity. How she attempts to cope with this knotty problem, not to mention how to break the news to her prickly mother, her childless sister, her best friend, her therapist, her husband's family, and the men in her life, is the core of this story.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
"So, I figured, what the hell." That's Julia's response to just about anything, including marriage, pregnancy and cheating on her husband-not necessarily in that order. In this wry, brutally honest debut novel, Guterson slashes into the happy homilies of chick lit, revealing the underside of happily ever after. Part-time middle-school teacher Julia is nearing 40 and married to more-or-less satisfactory Jim, a Seattle sports writer, with whom she has a 15-year-old son, Chad. For years, she's been pining away for her first love, Ray, and when she sees him at a wedding-"looking for all the world like a sun-drenched god"-she promptly follows him into the bathroom. Soon she's pregnant, and she can't be sure whether the father is Jim or Ray. Meanwhile, clueless Jim is distracted by a painfully obvious crush on his young, beautiful officemate Patricia, which prevents him from taking the moral high ground. What distinguishes this book from its genre counterparts is author Guterson's unabashed willingness to let Julia voice the sort of thoughts that are publicly eschewed, and these glimpses into the mind of her tell-it-like-it-is narrator make for some liberating, laugh-out- loud passages. There are also moments of heartbreak and kindness-particularly in Julia's relationship with Chad-which are all the more potent for their understatement. Agent, Sarah Burnes at Burnes & Clegg. Rights sold in France, Holland, Italy and Japan. (Jan.) FYI: The author's brother is David Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars; Our Lady of the Forest). Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
This first novel from the younger sister of David Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars) offers a funny yet heartfelt answer to the question, What happened to the one that got away? Julia is fast approaching middle age, with one teenage son and a husband who has eyes for a younger co-worker. She is also plagued by thoughts of her college boyfriend Ray, who, it turns out, is again the love of her life. While attending the wedding of some old friends, Julia and Ray meet and quickly rekindle their romance. Soon after, Julia discovers that she is pregnant and correctly assumes that Ray is the father. How this story will end ultimately depends on Julia. Will she finally allow herself to fall into Ray's arms and pick up where they left off, or will she decide that she had made the right choice all along? With Julia as the first-person narrator, readers can hear her innermost thoughts, and the comedy inherent in the situation comes through. Recommended for large public libraries.-Anastasia Diamond, Cleveland P.L. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A slender, sarcastic drama of unhappy middle-aged marrieds in the Seattle suburbs. By turns irritating, shocking, and moving, Guterson's debut follows in glib, lip-snarling prose the sad plight of a 40ish woman who finds herself pregnant and not sure who the father is-whether it's her unsavory sports-mad husband of 15 years, or the maddening, commitment-shy, on-again-off-again lover from her youth whom she had sex with recently in the bathroom at a wedding. Julia, by all accounts, is in "a bit of a mess" as she ponders the facts of her horrid life-married to bland Jim, who flaunts his infatuation with another woman from work; the mother of pot-smoking, withdrawn teenaged Chad, whom she hardly knows anymore; chained by lack of imagination to a part-time job in a middle school that leaves her brain-dead; and still pining for the golden lover of her college days, Ray, who resurfaces maybe once a season. Pathetic, unambitious, and depressed, Julia elicits nothing but shrugs from her long-time therapist. But Guterson manages to elevate even this sordid material by appealing to her reader's sense of having-been-there empathy. Despite some spiteful characterizations passed off as humor-referring to the people at her middle school, Julia comments: "Yet even a smelly, obnoxious kid is a few floors above the sub-zero basement mentality of the vast majority of teachers at the school"-Guterson refuses to demonize her characters, not Jim, or Ray, or even Jim's perennially drunk mother, Alice, who's described as "the family spittoon." The miracle of Julia's pregnancy (dealt with in a similarly uncringing fashion) turns everyone, miraculously, into palatable characters, though it feels like a trick inthe end. Colloquial, and reveling in the plainspoken stupid: a novel that feels depressingly like what the future might hold for American letters. Agent: Sarah Burnes/Burnes & Clegg
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