Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail
£2.80
‘I have rarely seen modern marriage reproduced so faithfully in print. It’s about love once the early romance has subsided. Hilarious’ Jojo Moyes, Woman and Home
‘Standard Deviation is a marvel’ Kate Atkinson
‘Addictive reading’ Mail on Sunday
‘A comic masterpiece’ Observer
A divinely funny novel about the challenges of a good marriage, the delight and heartache of raising children, and the irresistible temptation to wonder about the path not taken.
Graham Cavanaugh’s second wife, Audra, is everything his first wife was not. She considers herself privileged to live in the age of the hair towel, talks non-stop through her epidural, labour and delivery, invites the doorman to move in and the eccentric members of their son’s Origami Club to Thanksgiving. She is charming and spontaneous and fun but life with her can be exhausting.
In the midst of the day-to-day difficulties and delights of marriage and raising a child with Asperger’s, his first wife, Elspeth, reenters Graham’s life. Former spouses are hard to categorize – are they friends, enemies, old flames, or just people who know you really, really well? Graham starts to wonder: How can anyone love two such different women? Did he make the right choice? Is there a right choice?
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Additional information
| Publisher | Fourth Estate (23 May 2017) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| File size | 1986 KB |
| Text-to-Speech | Enabled |
| Screen Reader | Supported |
| Enhanced typesetting | Enabled |
| X-Ray | Enabled |
| Word Wise | Enabled |
| Sticky notes | On Kindle Scribe |
| Print length | 338 pages |
by wonderfuldavey
I enjoyed this book, it didn’t have a specific storyline and ending, more like a meander through someone’s life. I found the descriptions of their son’s Asperger’s interesting and as the mother of an only child I found it refreshing to read a novel about another one child family.
by jason lee
Just a regular story of a married couple with a child, doing what they do,but with lots of wit and charm. As a parent and husband, everything seemed familiar but different and always thought provoking. Very enjoyable read.
by MRS SE OSMOND
Loved this , wonderful warm , witty observation. Some very endearing characters , particularly Audra . Some laugh out loud moments but mostly tender description of what could be ordinary emotions made extraordinary by the depth of feeling described .
by WGCReviewer
When I started reading this I was drawn in by the characters and the description of their lives. Audra seems to have few barriers; she is voluble, friendly, and often puts her foot in it, without really noticing or caring that much. Graham is much more reserved and married Audra after having an affair with her during his marriage to Elspeth, the polar opposite of Audra. The story is well written, with a lot of funny or thought-provoking lines but after getting to know the characters a bit, I almost stopped reading because the story did not seem to be going anywhere. There are threads that progress throughout the book, but none reach much of a conclusion, and although maybe I was not paying enough attention, there were a couple of incidents that felt really significant that never really went anywhere. Audra has some sort of a relationship with another man which she says was non-physical, but as Graham won’t talk to her about it when he finds out, we don’t really learn what was involved. Graham sees this as an excuse to spend a lot of time with his ex and Audra doesn’t mind. We find out that Graham had an affair while married to Elspeth and before his affair with Audra, and that Elspeth also had an affair while married to him. I started to lose a lot of sympathy for the characters at this point. When Graham opts out of sleeping with Elspeth when she invites him to., to me this feels in a way like as big a betrayal of her as him leaving her in the first place. There are lots of threads to the story and I was still not clear where it was all going when suddenly I go to the next page and it’s the Acknowledgements section. If you just enjoy the writing, the observations on modern life and relationships, and the ins and outs of these people lives then this may be a very enjoyable read. if you are expecting a plot with clear progression and a conclusion then this might not be the book for you.
by C. M. Allwood
I didn’t really mind there wasn’t a plot and the minutiae of a New York family’s life had a certain interest. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as taken with Audra as Graham is, finding her irritating – though I think she’s supposed to be – but not loveable, which I imagine she’s also supposed to be. It was also hard to understand why she married him as he comes across as quite dull. I liked Matthew very much and felt he was sympathetically portrayed. The quirky origami characters were, well, quirky. I didn’t find it as funny as I’d hoped but everyone’s different. Probably you have to be in the mood for quirk to really relish it
by dancer
Just the best read. Family life in all its glory and pain. I read it in two days. Loved the humour, the poignancy. Everyone will identify with something, if not everything, in this book.
by Zandra
I found this very funny, especially the quips about expectations and the lengths people will go to to please those they love. I didn’t find the plot especially believable – all these weird people coming to stay and visitng to eat endless meals – but many of the feelings involved were entirely believable and engaging.
by AnnaLivia
An intriguingly newish look at a marriage, and parenthood of a special needs child – although with a strong flavour of Anne Tyler and a running out of steam at the end. The characters and their relationships are a long way from credible, but the author is such a good and amusing writer she gets away with it. An enjoyable read.