Thursday, September 5, 2013

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

I picked up The Silver Linings Playbook because a coworker had told me she enjoyed the movie. I like to read the book if I can before I see the movie so I picked up The Silver Linings Playbook. Not quite what I expected but overall an enjoyable read.
When we start The Silver Linings Playbook, Pat Peoples is in "the bad place", a mental institution. Pat is here for his apart time from his wife, Nikki. Everything Pat does is in hopes of ending his apart time and reuniting with Nikki. Pat isn't sure why he's in "the bad place" and isn't sure what bad things he did to wind up there. But Pat's mother petitions to bring him to his family's home and let him continue to heal there. So Pat winds up in his parent's basement where he continues to attempt to end his apart time from Nikki.
At first I had a hard time relating to Pat. He's very focused on reuniting with Nikki and many of the things he does make little sense. But once you become accustom to Pat's mental health issues, he makes his own type of sense. Pat's really trying to set things right. He wants to be back with Nikki and does everything in his power to end apart time. But there's a lot that Pat's forgotten and a lot his family keeps from him in order to help him heal. Some of those "lies" were hard for me to understand but made more and more sense as time went on.
During his apart time, Pat meets Tiffany, a very broken woman, who is also trying to heal. Tiffany complicates and enhances Pat's life. While Tiffany pissed me off a lot of the time, I grew to like her character and wished for her to have a happy ending.
Overall The Silver Linings Playbook was a good story. My only gripes was that Quick spoils several classic novels like The Great Gatsby which I am almost finished with. I went 37 years without anyone telling me the ending and now that I have an hour left in the audiobook, bam, I know how it ends. Kind of pissed me off. Other than that, I enjoyed The Silver Linings Playbook. I need to watch the movie version now. Others who shared their thoughts on The Silver Linings Playbook: My Friend Amy, Laura's Book Reviews, Insomnia Of Books, Three Cats and A Book, and Sometimes Sweet.

1 comment:

  1. I have yet to read the book but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie!

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