Reviews for Open House

The average rating for Open House based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-05-17 00:00:00 Goran Vukic Open House is a celebration of self-absorption, self-centeredness and self-pity in women. The book centers on a recent divorcee, Sam, who whines incessantly and feels sorry for herself. Sam reads like a misogynist's idea of what a woman is, alternating between a nagging, vindictive shrew and an emotional, ultra-sensitive, self-pitying sad-sack who's always one slight away from crying. Seriously, why exactly are we supposed to give a damn about this pathetic individual? There are people like this in real life and they do deserve help, of the psychiatric kind; that doesn't mean their self-centered antics have to be celebrated or legitimized in "literature" (if an Oprah Book Club pick can count under that distinction). Talking about self-centeredness, there's a slobbering interview with author Elizabeth Berg featured in the back of the book, in which she says "A lot of men have told me that my books help them understand their women better...". If I thought there was even the slightest truth to the notion that most women behave like this, and not just a certain sector of Oprah-loving upper-class divorcees who feel like the world owes them something, it would be enough for me to swear off the female sex for life. What makes the whining and self-pitying of Sam so perverse is that, by all accounts, she lives a really good life. Better than most of us do. She's never had to work a day in her life. She lives a luxurious, upper-class lifestyle. Even after the breakdown of her marriage, she gets to keep the house, and the fact that she needs to bring in tenants to help with the pay is treated as some major life-changing development rather than the reality it is for most people. Here's someone who has had everything handed to her on a platter in life and yet cries, whines, and never learns a goddamn thing. There are people struggling to pay their bills, people starving to death in third-world countries, people suffering with severe disabilities and mental illness, and all she can do is whine about how her divorce is the end of the world. Look, I get that divorce can be a hugely upsetting and catastrophic event in some people's lives - my parents divorced, but they never took it as cart blanche to forgo all their responsibilities and act like immature children. Among the litany of Sam's offenses: - After finding a pair of her husband's dirty boxers in the laundry, she buries her face in them and tries to inhale the scent. Then, she sews up the fly on the boxers. If you think this was some stupid spur-of-the-moment decision, to quote Sam, "With great care, I do this, with tenderness". Oh yeah, in case that wasn't enough: "Then I go back to the pile of laundry and get some of his fancy socks and sew the tops of them shut". - Determined to live in "elegance" following the divorce, Sam decides she will make her son freshly-squeezed orange juice...despite the fact that he doesn't like it. When he says she doesn't have to make it, she insists. When he asks for a glass of Tropicana from the fridge instead, she refuses. When he asks if they're out of it, she lies and says yes. When he opens the fridge and sees the jug of juice, she dumps it down the sink. That will show the stupid kid for wanting a glass of juice. - Sam insists on being the one to break the news to her son about the divorce. Then, she tells her son that the reason for the divorce is because his dad is self-centered and she hates him. Following this outburst, she begins to mope about her bad breath, gray hair and cellulite rather than the fact, you know, that she just horribly upset her son. - Deciding not to resort to vindictive pettiness, Sam goes to "Tiffanys" and charges $12,000 worth of stuff she has no need for to her husband's credit card. She's then shocked when her husband freezes their account and cuts her off. - She eavesdrops on her son and his friend. When she hears them playing a harmless prank call on a girl in their class, she storms into the room, takes a bag of cookies from the friend and decides she will lecture her son on how to treat women properly. Prank phone calls? No. Charging $12,000 to someone else's credit card? Sure, why not? - Sam goes on a blind date with a man. She acts like a real floozy, kissing him in the restaurant and asking "Should we do it here? Or should we go and make out in the car with the heater turned up?" They end up back at his place, where they begin making love to each other. Midway through, she asks this man playfully, with a laugh, to stop. When he doesn't, she tells him seriously to stop. He immediately stops. Sure, he is mean to her afterward, but he does stop. Then she goes home, tells the man who is babysitting her son as a favor that all men are assholes, and then claims she was date-raped, "Almost". So you ask a guy to stop and he does, and that's date-rape? You wanna try telling that to a woman has actually suffered through the trauma of date rape, Sam? - After getting a temporary week-long job literally doing nothing but sitting behind a desk and making change, Sam is offered a full-time position. She turns it down. She says she can't commit to a full-time job. Really, what the hell else do you have to do? If you actually have the time to delicately sew the flies shut on your husband's boxers, I think you have time for a job. - Sam prepares a Thanksgiving dinner for herself. She mixes all the food on her plate, and when she doesn't like the look of it, dumps all the perfectly good food down the garbage disposal. Meanwhile, somewhere out-there is a family of four starving. - Throughout Open House, Sam rents out rooms in her house to different tenants. If I remember correctly, at one time or another she enters each of these tenant's rooms without their knowledge and pokes around, lies on their beds and just plain out invades their privacy. As a final note, besides the general nastiness of Sam, I was fairly disturbed by the abundance of racist and homophobic stereotypes throughout Open House. I consider myself a fairly politically incorrect person; it takes quite a bit to offend me. However, even I was a little put off by some of the characterizations in Open House. There's a black guy who carries a boom-box blasting rap music, a black mom begging for change on a street corner with her kid, an old Asian Laundromat owner with "tea-colored teeth" who speaks in broken English with monosyllabic phrases such as "Detective!" and "Dumb", a flamboyantly gay hairdresser, and a teenager who is, of course, an emo. We get 241 pages about the troubles of middle-aged, upper-class, white women and you can't throw in a single minority character that isn't a stereotype straight out of the 1920's.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-08-10 00:00:00 Anthony Anderson Elizabeth Berg might just be my favorite author for a guaranteed, enjoyable comfort read. I may need to keep one of her books handy at all times. Her stories are true to life, her characters are relatable and I tend to fly through her books and end them with a sense of satisfaction for time well spent. This was no different. Samantha "Sam" is sailing along in her marriage, keeping a home for her husband and Mothering her son Travis, but when her husband leaves her the boat capsizes and leaves her rather adrift. She starts to question everything in her life. After her initial shock, (and rather fun reactions....which includes a call to Martha Stewart and a shopping trip at Tiffany's) she gets busy trying to create a new life for herself and her son. She backslides some but gets quite a bit of help from her no nonsense friend Rita, "clueless" Mother and a new friend, King. Her son Travis even offers up quite a bit of 11 year old advice.....mostly, "You really are crazy!" This is a thoughtful and often humorous look at the end of a marriage and one way of life...and all the new avenues that can open up to you if you are willing to travel them. I would imagine many women have been in the same place....or helped someone close to them through it. The story is not all feel good, but somehow you know it will end up well. "I remove my wedding rings and put them in the jewelry box. So many others have done this. I am not the only one. I am not the only one. But here, I am the only one."