Review: You Should Have Known (by Jean Hanff Korelitz)

My Rating: 3 stars

I decided to take a little bit of a detour from the ARCs and library books that I’ve been reading to squeeze in this buddy read with one of my good friends.  She was interested in reading this because she had heard that the book would be the basis for an upcoming HBO mini-series adaptation starring Nicole Kidman -- who is one of her favorite actresses -- and being the “informed watcher” that my friend is, she wanted to understand the backstory first so that she will be prepared when the series actually comes out (I’m actually the exact same way when it comes to TV series and movies, which is one reason why we’re such good friends, lol). 

This is a novel that actually came out back in 2014 -- the story revolves around Grace Reinhart Sachs, a marriage therapist in New York City who seems to have the perfect life, with a smart and handsome husband (Jonathan) who is a respected doctor at one of the city’s biggest medical establishments and a teenage son (Henry) who is musically gifted, intelligent, and is a model student.  In addition to living among the upper echelons of New York high society, Grace also has a forthcoming book that is the culmination of her career experience and quite possibly could make her one of the most sought after therapists in the city.   One day, when tragedy strikes the family of a boy at her son’s school and Grace’s husband coincidentally goes missing around the same time, the perfect life that Grace had built for herself threatens to unravel right before her eyes.  But the physical turmoil that she goes through pales in comparisons to the turmoil in her mind and in her heart, and soon, the question becomes whether she will be able to maintain her sanity and rebuild her life.

My first reaction after reading this book is that, at 400+ pages, it was way longer than it really needed to be.  I normally don’t have a problem with big books like this but this particular one felt especially long due to the way it was structured.  The first two-thirds of the book felt really slow and dragged out, mostly because the story would go off on various tangents every few pages, to the point that one simple scene could take an entire chapter to play out.  Not only that, whenever there was dialogue between characters, it was almost always interrupted by Grace’s personal thoughts and memories (the narrative is told from Grace’s perspective) – so a conversation that might be 4 or 5 lines of dialogue, something that would take up at most a quarter of a page let’s say, ends up spanning over 20 to 30 pages.  There was also a lot of “describing” of minutiae (for instance, several pages describing Grace’s office, from the color of her couch to the paintings on the wall and the backstory on both), details that I felt weren’t really necessary in advancing the plot and mostly made the story more tedious to read.  Halfway through the book, I started to ask myself what the point of the story was, as plot-wise, nothing significant had happened – it was mostly pages and pages of Grace’s thoughts and the tangents she goes off on when someone says something that triggers a particular memory for her.  Interestingly enough, in the last third or so of the book, the style seemed to shift in that the story went from slow and drawn out to very fast-paced, with one thing happening after another – it was almost as if the last third of the book was written by someone else entirely and not the same person who wrote the first two-thirds.  I felt like the story was told in a very “roundabout” way, which made it a bit hard to follow and also exhaustive to read.

With all of that said though, the reason I rated this 3 stars and not lower (technically I’m between 3 and 3.5 stars on this one) is because, despite the convoluted structure, the way the story was written made me feel compelled to keep reading and to find out whether Grace would be able to put the pieces of her life back together.   Character development-wise, I actually felt the author did a good job with the main character Grace in that, by letting us (the readers) into her mind and making us experience first-hand the mental and psychological breakdown that she endures as the result of her carefully-manufactured world collapsing around her, it presented an interesting, thought-provoking commentary about relationships as well as human behavior.  Basically, I liked the premise of the story overall and even felt some sections were cleverly written (especially the parts that subtly juxtaposed what was happening to Grace with the advice that she was giving to her clients), but I wasn’t a fan of the story’s structure or its execution.  When it comes to books, I’m really big on the “experience” of reading a book and for me, this one was a bit of a struggle, though I did get some food-for-thought out of it so in that sense, it was a worthwhile read.

Tying the book back to the TV series adaptation mentioned at the beginning of this review – in reading what is out there so far about the series, one thing I found interesting is that there seem to be characters in the series that were not actually in the book.  Also, in addition to Nicole Kidman taking on the role of Grace Sachs, they also cast Hugh Grant in the role of her husband Jonathan – this is significant because in the book, Jonathan is a character that is only talked about but never actually appears…yet in the series, it seems that Jonathan as a character will have more of a presence than he did in the book.  Both of these things lead me to wonder just how “faithful” this adaptation will be to the book -- but since the series is still in the works right now, I will withhold further judgement until the filming is actually completed and the series is released.

Overall, I feel this book is highly readable, but for the right audience.  It does give some interesting insight on relationships, but I think the length of the book and the convoluted way it was written will probably deter some folks from picking this one up.  I was actually tempted to abandon this one myself during the parts that I felt were especially slow, but of course I continued with it and it does pick up pace near the end.  The reviews for this book seem to be a mixed bag so it’s probably a good idea to check out both the highly rated and lower rated ones to get a better feel for what to expect.