Plus One

I had to remind myself that this was NOT a memoir because the writing style was so effective. Briefly, Alex and Figgy Zicklin-Sherman are a married couple in Hollywood. The book opens as Figgy (and her Plus one – her husband) attend the Emmy Awards and she wins for Best Comedy Show. Up until a year ago, she had been sporadically employed as a comedy writer and Alex worked in advertising for a small firm that focused on doing good. Alex quits, becomes the Domestic First Responder holding down the homefront and their two kids. Alex and Figgy are totally opposite but seemed to be eternally synced, made for each other. The novel is about their lives after the Emmy win and the show being picked up for another season and Figgy spending most of her days immersed in that world. Alex loves his role as the strong and supportive one at first but then struggles with his Plus One identity. He connects with other Plus Ones with plenty of time on their hands and is influenced by them and develops insecurity about his future with Figgy. Alex and Figgy complement each other perfectly and though there is strife and doubts on both their parts, they come to their senses. But before that, they deal with their crazy parents, unique kids, moving on up yet remaining true to their core beliefs.

The book reads like a true life story and is laugh out loud funny at times and generally has a light style that belies the hum that runs though it. Told from Alex' point of view, he and Figgy move through this life-altering experience with doubts and worries and questions about their survival together. True crazy, devoted love pulls them back to everything that brought them together.

From The Next Best Thing to Landline to Funny Girl to this, I think I might have reached my limit about fictional TV writers. Sadly, this was the wrong one to go out on.

You could, I think, make the case that most of this book reads like the prequel to Landline from the husband's perspective – and in many ways you'd be right, but still, you shouldn't do that.* This is the story of Alex Sherman-Zicklin, the husband (and plus one) of Figgie. Figgie had been wife, mother and struggling TV writer, who is now an Emmy-award show runner of a multi-Emmy-winning cable comedy. Which means all of the sudden, she's the bread winner (winning far more bread than he ever did), so he quits the job he's not happy about to be a “domestic first responder.”

He quickly becomes bored, gets a creepy-friend, falls in lust with a butcher/food blogger, ignores his kids, and does several other deceptive, marriage-damaging things covering the range from pathetic to devious to potentially criminal. Which coincided with Figgy taking up with trust-destroying antics of her own. If this selfish loser had just talked to his wife about what was going on, almost everything that happened could've been avoided. Not that self-involved Figgy was much better, really – I don't see what either of them saw in the other.

Alex, his Plus One pal (whose name I've already forgotten), and (to an extent) the butcher are characters – everyone else is pretty much a plot device or place holder. Even Figgy is more of a presence, maybe an obstacle, than a character.

Somewhere in there I was supposed to laugh, I'm sure, but I didn't manage more than an almost-grin.

The last chapter, maybe two, saved this one for me and turned it from a book I really didn't like to a book I don't mind too much. It's still not a book I'd recommend, just one I have no antipathy for.

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Landline