Going Overboard

Going Overboard: The Misadventures of a Military Spouse is this month's selection for our Spouse's Book Club, and was chosen because we thought it might be a lighthearted look at the life of a military spouse. The formula was simple: Clumsy, disaster-prone wife is left alone with children and the rest of the wives while hubby is deployed and Iraq war begins. To add to the craziness, wife has a crush on her gynecologist and is unable to balance her own checkbook. Very funny stuff.

By the end of the book, as we all know, the wife is supposed to have survived some hyjinx, squelched the doctor-crush by imagining him with orange hair, and learned to balance a checkbook. Right? Wrong. With the turn of each page, I kept hoping that Sarah Smiley would tie all of this up into a nice bundle that wouldn't make me feel so bad that she is probably the only impression of a military spouse that many of her non-military readers will ever have. Just when I thought that Sarah Smiley would come around and do the right thing, she managed to sink even deeper into a self-centered, depressive, and boring abyss.

Sarah Smiley is apparently an accomplished writer, publishing a syndicated column called Shore Duty and contributing to magazines that circulate well through the military world. I have never read her work before this book, and I'm going to avoid it - not because I don't think it will be good, but because I'm assuming it's good and that's why a publisher took a chance on this book. The thing is, she had a LOT to write about without boring me with her inability to do the right thing. I would have liked to hear more about her parenting two young sons, a subject rife with comedic potential.

When you read this book, you don't see Smiley as one of the competent spouses that all wives are forced to be while their husband is away. She doesn't even become this person, which is ultimately what made me so angry. I can take the "I'm so funny because I'm a woman and I don't know how to balance a checkbook or mow my own lawn" stuff for only so long before I feel the author is just lazy and stupid - and, in Smiley's case, lacks the embarrassment gene that would have kept her from publishing this book. At one point, another wife has called her for help because she is having bleeding to death due to a miscarriage. Instead of jumping in the car to go take her to the hospital, Smiley pleads with another friend to do it because, in her words, "I can't possibly handle this." Give me a break.

It's not all bad. I thought she captured the essence of deployment pretty well: the compulsive checking of email and voicemail for word from your spouse, the letdown when that call comes and you find you don't have time to say what you want (or your spouse is VERY drunk), and the loneliness. And my spouse is only away for weeks at a time, so my experience of deployments is laughable compared to the many-month stints that other families endure. For that reason, I'll cut Smiley a little slack. Okay, that was enough slack. Now let's get back to talking about how annoyed I am with this book.

I really hope that the other ladies in my book club didn't love this book. At least, I hope that, at the next meeting, I am able to nibble politely on snack mix and nod as others talk about what a great book this is and wait calmly for someone to ask me what I thought. When I answer, I hope I am capable of saying, in a sweet voice, that I was not as enthusiastic about the book, to be honest. I hope that I do not, under any circumstances, resort to blowing raspberries (in the manner of my 6 month old) to exhibit my unspeakable disappointment in this book. Wish me luck.