Book Review and #BlogTour #RandomThingsTours @annecater – Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman (4 stars)

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Title: Separation Anxiety

Author: Laura Zigman

Published: 23^rd of April 2020 – Doubleday

Format: Ebook – 288 pages

“All I knew was that his absence was proof that people stayed with you for the rest of your life no matter when you stopped seeing them or when their body disappeared from your world.” – Separation Anxiety

Hello Hello! How are you?

I know I say this nearly every day, but how is it already SATURDAY??? I don’t know where these days, weeks, months are going, but I can’t believe it’s nearly already May.

Today, I have another wonderful review on my stop for the latest #RandomThingsTours hosted by the lovely Anne Cater. When I got an email about this book I instantly knew that I wanted to read it and I knew I was going to like it! Thank you to Anne for letting me take part in this tour and sending me the book! Keep reading to find out what I thought of this lovely book.

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

From bestselling author Laura Zigman, a hilarious novel about a wife and mother whose life is unraveling and the well-intentioned but increasingly disastrous steps she takes to course-correct her relationships, her career, and her belief in herself.

Judy never intended to start wearing the dog. But when she stumbled across her son Teddy’s old baby sling during a halfhearted basement cleaning, something in her snapped. So: the dog went into the sling, Judy felt connected to another living being, and she’s repeated the process every day since.

Life hasn’t gone according to Judy’s plan. Her career as a children’s book author offered a glimpse of success before taking an embarrassing nose dive. Teddy, now a teenager, treats her with some combination of mortification and indifference. Her best friend is dying. And her husband, Gary, has become a pot-addled professional “snackologist” who she can’t afford to divorce. On top of it all, she has a painfully ironic job writing articles for a self-help website—a poor fit for someone seemingly incapable of helping herself.

Wickedly funny and surprisingly tender, Separation Anxiety offers a frank portrait of middle-aged limbo, examining the ebb and flow of life’s most important relationships. Tapping into the insecurities and anxieties that most of us keep under wraps, and with a voice that is at once gleefully irreverent and genuinely touching, Laura Zigman has crafted a new classic for anyone taking fumbling steps toward happiness.

MY REVIEW

Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman is a contemporary humour novel in which we follow Judy Vogel, a wife and a mother struggling to deal with her life, her marriage, her growing son, her dying best friend, so she starts wearing the dog in a sling!

This was such a refreshing read, it had me laughing one minute and sniffing the next. I knew I was going to like it because the premise sounded absolutely hilarious and lovely, but it was so much more than that. I adored watching all the characters come to life and see how they all fit together around Judy and Charlotte (the dog in the sling). Judy writes advice for Well/er a type of self-help website, but she is unable to help herself until she realises that sometimes you just have to go through things and survive them to actually end up helping yourself and others.

This book is set in a little town in the United States, in the present-day where people have to grapple with politically correct statements, organic produce creativity gurus and peaceful schools with no rules. I really loved this context because the author was very witty and sarcastic about a lot of the elements of this book and its setting. She was aware of life’s little worries and portrayed them side-by-side with very political and ethical elements, making the whole plot ridiculous. I really enjoyed reading about all these things, it was a bit as if she was showing all the elements we have in our lives today, having to provide vegan food, be politically correct, use the right nouns to refer to people and animals, be creative in a world that is cracking under the pressure of so much money and corruption, and Laura Zigman turned all of these very real elements into almost side characters, in the end showing that the most important thing is who you are and who you want to be, what you want to do to get there, family, friends, accepting yourself and wearing the dog in a sling if you feel like you have a bird on your head (you’ll understand if you read it!).

This was such an original book, and I smiled the whole way through. It ended up being a lot more meaningful than I was expecting and each little part of the plot came together at the end and pulled at my heartstrings.

MY THOUGHTS AND RATING

This was such a lovely story and I adored every minute of it! I did lose concentration once or twice during my reading of this book and I found that some things could have done with either a tiny bit more detail or maybe a bit less. I also thought that there could have been a bit more emotion in this story, I’ve bawled my eyes out for less emotional elements so maybe it just needed a touch more emotion to make it perfect, hence my 4-star rating. The writing style was great though and it really helped me stay focused and grab my attention.

This really was a lovely book to read, it distracted me from the world for a few hours, it made me laugh, made my heart all fuzzy and I can honestly say that it was just such a heart-warming, special book and I think that everyone should read it because it can appeal to everyone. There was really good anxiety rep, along with marriage failure, a boy growing into a teen, a husband with such bad anxiety that he has to take medicinal cannabis, losing a dear friend to cancer (some of these could be triggers so I would be careful); overall, just a really meaningful, fast-paced, adorable book. I highly recommend.

Thank you once again to Anne and Laura for letting me take part in this lovely blog tour and for sending me the book, I’ll definitely be looking out for more books by this author.

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed this review! See you soon, stay safe,

Ellie xx

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – LAURA ZIGMAN

Laura Zigman is the author of ANIMAL HUSBANDRY, which was a bestseller and was made into the film Someone Like You, starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd), Dating Big Bird, Piece of Work and Her. She has also been a contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Huffington Post. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, son and deeply human Sheltie.

Laura’s Twitter Handle: @LauraZigman

If you would like to purchase this book, you can find it here: Amazon UK (affiliate link) – Amazon FR (affiliate link) – AbeBooks (affiliate link) – The Book Depository (affiliate link) – Audible FR (affiliate link) – Amazon US – Waterstones – Barnes and Noble – Scrib’d