the number we end up with

"You can safely become the person you always wanted to be, or the person you were always scared you would become." So says main character Anjou Lovett in Beth Goldner's tale of grief. She is referring to meeting strangers on the train but the same could be said for being a crazy person.

Synopsis (and I'm not giving anything away): Woman meets man on train, woman begins romantic relationship with man, woman finds out man is married, man leaves wife for woman, man starts cheating on woman (surprise surprise), man leaves woman1 for woman2, man gets run over by a car, and then bringing it all full circle, woman1 becomes train wreck. Get it, they met on a train and then she becomes a train wreck?

OK, that's just the back story. Seriously, this was supposed to be a touching story about how one woman deals with her issues of abandonment and grief by working for the Census Bureau. And if the book jacket described it like that, I never would have bought the thing. But of course, I fell for the morose and disturbing storyline and the promise of a character finding redemption in a journey. What I got was a woman so annoying that if I was her friend when she went off the deep end, I would have let her drown.

I'm sure that I wouldn't be so critical if I had read at least one good book since this summer but I am starting to feel like I am losing my touch in choosing new material. Therefore, I am moving on to the sure thing. Joan Didion will not let me down. Welcome to the Year of Magical Thinking.