We Are All Fine Here

by Mary Guterson

Book Overview

A thoroughly irresistible and slyly intelligent 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 bitter-sweet consequences. 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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 039915230X
• ISBN13: 9780399152306
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

BEST BOOK EVER!!!!!!!!

I feel so strongly that this is indeed the best book ever, that I used eight exclamation points (one more than the reviewer who deemed it the "worst book ever") in order to convey my enthusiasm. Come on, Ms. Hebert, are you crazy?! The book is so insightful and funny. Where's your sense of humor? Is there a Hebert brother who got all the humor in the family? Read this book; you'll love it.

Really great book

I got it at the library on a Carnival Cruise with lots of ports and few at sea days... Well, I started to wish there were fewer port days so I could just sit back and enjoy this delightful read. It really is a great book, full of "naked truths" and "gallows humour" and sometimes I thought the author must have read my mind before she sat down and wrote about it. It's not very long but less is more, the point comes across, to go on any longer would be superfluous. Over all, a really good intelligent read!

Erika Hamerquist

When I got home from work last night this book had mysteriously appeared on my back porch railing, wrapped in a plastic baggie and weighed down by a big rock. No note with it, but whoever had left it there must know me well because he or she had gotten the author to autograph and personalize it for me and my name was spelled right. I'll have to do some detecting today to figure out which clever friend or relative knew how much I'd appreciate this tasty morsel. Whoever you are, THANKS! I NEEDED THAT! Like most reviewers here, I read it in a single sitting, and did a lot of chortling. Every few pages I'd say to myself, "[Friend] would LOVE this!" until I eventually realized I'd gone through the list of every intelligent woman with a sense of humor in my acquaintance. I'd say that's a pretty good indication of a fine piece of work. Highly recommended.

A fantastic debut - We want more!!!

When I first read a review of this book, I thought this is a book I have to have as it sounds interesting and the author lives in the town where I lived for the majority of the 1990s. So when my husband was near a local bookstore a few hours later, I asked him to pick it up for me. I was surprised when he got it home and it was so, well, small. I thought I had wasted my money on this tiny little book that I didn't know much about. I had even thought of returning it. But this was an amazing little book. It was so full of stark reality and LOL funny in some places. She had a dark sense of humor which I really enjoyed. Basically, Julia is a woman caught between two men - Jim, the one she married after she got pregnant with his child 16 years previously and Ray, her college sweetheart who she has never gotten out of her mind. When he calls her and asks her to accompany him to the wedding of old friends, she jumps at the chance not only to see many people she's lost touch with, but to spend time with Ray-her true love. But when she gets pregnant and doesn't know who the father might be as she also had one of her rare sexual encounters with her husband during this same time, things get, well, complicated. Mary Guterson, sister of Snow Falling on Cedars author David Guterson, has an acerbic wit, and is often sarcastic as well as blunt as she writes in Julia's point of view. My only complaint is that the book could have been longer and suffered from a few typos that threw me out of the story; but those are minor quibbles in the bigger scheme of things. I will be waiting with baited breath for her next book

Loved it!

Just read an advance copy of this book and could not put it down--don't be fooled by a cliched chick lit cover, it's incredibly moving.