Michele Farnsworth

This Is Just Exactly Like You
Drew Perry
Penguin Group (USA)
Publish date: 2010-04-01
$25.95
0670021547
Hardcover
Review date: 03/01/10

This Is Just Exactly Like You is a relatively dark, but definitely humorous account of suburban survival and life’s occasional miracles.

Jack Lang impulsively buys the house directly across the street from his own and that is just the final straw for his wife Beth. She leaves him and their six-year old autistic son, Hendrick, and moves in with Jack’s best friend, Terry.  Jack tries to reassure everyone in his life that he is okay, but no one believes him. Terry’s old girlfriend Rena, doesn’t believe Jack either and shows up on his doorstep to see how he’s holding up. Jack begins to let Rena into his life, Hendrick starts speaking fluent Spanish and Jack must face the fact that his “grown up” life is much more complicated than he’d ever thought. Jack and Rena and Hen eventually move in to the house across the street and bossy, nagging Rena is perhaps the worst “rebound” Jack could have chosen.

As Drew Perry’s characters change houses, partners and perceptions, little Hendrick begins to emerge from his shell.  Hen becomes the witty, centering force for this dysfunctional group of grown-ups, parenting this confused bunch as often as they are parenting him.

My first reaction to Perry’s story of suburban angst was that it seemed like a succession of journal entries, a very personal account of a relationship gone wrong and the struggles of parenting an autistic child. There are innumerable books out there with the same or incredibly similar themes, but this one is special in that it’s a GUY’S journal. It’s the man, it’s the father, that is left holding the responsibility and the child after the marriage dissolves and it’s from his point of view that this fairly common story is told. Perry’s Beth is written as a very unsympathetic character and while Jack makes some pretty dumb choices and doesn’t always take the high road, you begin, very quickly in the novel, to root for the guy. Jack’s love for Hen is palpable and his desire to just make things right for himself, for Hen and Beth and even for his employees at Patriot Mulch & Tree help readers engage with him.

One minor issue I have with Perry’s story is that the root cause of Beth and Jack’s break up is never thoroughly revealed or explored. It seems every time Beth and Jack are alone and have the opportunity to discuss what’s wrong between them, they refuse. I wanted to shake them both and shout, “just talk about this, you big dummies”.  It’s difficult to care if they reconcile, when you don’t know what really caused the split in the first place.