Book Review: "The Hidden Life Of Humans"

The Hidden Life of Humans by Erika Ritter

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


First, the good: this book had a really cute cover. Now, the bad, which is all of the rest of it. Have you ever had a friend who couldn't just say a thing simply, but instead had to get sidetracked into endless pointless tangents, or who tried much too hard to be clever, until you just wanted to shake her and shout, "Get to the point!"? Erika Ritter is that friend.

She's terrifically fond of similes and metaphors. Especially long unnecessary ones that go on and on. The story here is simple: forty-something television writer Dana fills her life, such as it is, with meaningless hook-ups with married men. Lo and behold, she falls in love with one of them, an annoyingly British one named Carl who is basically full of manure. Will she ever realize she could have more out of life? Will she ditch these bozos and move on? Does anyone care what she does by the time they've slogged through almost 400 pages of her self-absorbed nonsense?

Oh, I almost forgot. About 10% of the novel is narrated by a dog named Murphy. That's the cleverest, best part of the book. The rest of the time is taken up with Dana's boring life, her incredibly irritating friend Karen--who calls Dana "Katie", because, teh quirky--Dana's imaginary conversations with people who aren't even really there, which drag on for eons, and of course, the obligatory and endless similes and metaphors.

If you want to read a terribly over-written novel about a not very interesting woman, a novel that never will grab you or make you curious about how anything will come out--except for the sainted dog--this is for you. Otherwise, drop this turkey off the nearest cliff and run away.



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