The Overdue Life of Amy Byler (2019) by Kelly Harms
GoodReads meta-data is 328 pages, rated 3.94/5.00 by 3178 litizens.
Genre: Chick Lit
Verdict: Go, girl!
By a quirk of fate (= a college roommate from the salad days), Single Mom school librarian from the mud that is western Pennsylvania, while attending a conference, becomes the subject of a comprehensive multi-media makeover on a brief vacation in New York City from her innumerable maternal duties. Her vanished ex-husband reappears to take care of the children, twelve year old Einstein and a fourteen year old wanna be party girl. Single Mom has fifteen minutes of fame.
She is riddled with guilt, self-doubts, and hesitations about leaving home alone but keeps on keeping on. Roommate cuts through all that. Meanwhile, daughter sends encouraging and disconcerting texts. Her junior Einstein continues to solve math problems mentally for relaxation, mulling over careers as a neurosurgeon or astrophysicist. Made-over Single Mom’s idea of doing the town in the Big Worm is to go to bookstores, despite some strong-arming from roommate.
There are plenty of laughs along the way. Nerd boy makes jokes in Latin. Does he ever! Roommate says Single Mom has to wear make-up, otherwise people will think she is dead; so pale is she. Her assigned personal trainer is desperate to make this project work to further his career and that includes pimping for her, whether she wants it or not. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, #tags are all employed.
When occurs an accident Amy takes over while her Ex goes into Chernobyl meltdown. Crisis management according to Amy: if no one is dead and no one’s hair is on fire, we can cope. Party girl daughter was doing unsupervised diving practice in her Olympic ambitions to master the springboard and did a Greg Louganis. Then there is the fate of the stuffed cheetah at the hospital. Best not think about that.
By the way her conference presentation concerned Flexthology to encourage reluctant readers. She might have applied it to some of the GoodReads contributors who complain about this term, this idea, this….they know not what. The essence of Flexthology is a variety of comparable books from which these reluctant readers choose to complete reading assignments. To overcome peer pressure the reading is done on e-readers, having no tell-tale covers. There are many financial and legal issues to resolve about intellectual property. It is anthology reading but since there is choice it is flexible. The 2.0 ratings I glanced at on GoodReads grouse about this unusual term, and the very idea they might have to stop and think what the neo-logism means.
Of course libraries serve the same purpose: a variety of books from which a reader may choose. Amy’s point is to standardise that variety enough and to put it in tiers to fit it into a school curriculum. But wait, let’s not get too serious. It is after all only a plot device.