This Too Shall Pass

by S.J. Finn

Jen Montgomery's life appears, almost suddenly, to be at an impasse. Nothing is as secure or as certain as she had previously thought. Love, marriage, parenthood, family, work, the very fabric of her identity seems to be shifting. She had always considered herself a 'forever' person but now she isn't so sure, and this is frightening and exhilarating. As Monty struggles to reconcile her inescapable desire to break free with the loyalty she feels to the choices she has made, an unravelling takes place and reality sets in. This Too Shall Pass is a quiet, powerful novel that explores the shifting nature of a human being's life, and the ways in which we come undone and do ourselves back up again.

242 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2011

Reviews

[Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Agree with other reviews that this is a strange book which doesn't match up to its blurb at all. I just couldn't continue with it. The tone is overly serious and depressing. It starts off with a dramatic life event (woman leaving her husband for another woman), but offers no background leading up to it or any real examination of her feelings around it, and there's no real plot. The author just seems very removed from the characters. Life's too short to read this when there's so many great books out there!

[Felicity · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very introspective piece of work from SJ Finn. Monty takes us through her: MARRIAGE BREAK UP - “I cried as I drove home, furiously sad over the loss of love rather than the loss of him. Indeed, to fall out of love is perhaps as much a shock as any disappointment can be...Any failed marriage, even the most horrendous, has a lingering sadness. Difficult to account for or not, there’s a malaise”; DEALING WITH HOMOPHOBIA - “The town was repeating on me. The cafes, the people, the streets. I needed a bigger canvas. Somewhere that would offer some expansion, that would allow me to shed my old skin while not having to apologise for it. I needed to cast myself out of the set conventions people had boxed me into”; and the TAXING WORK ENVIRONMENT OF A CHILD PSYCHIATRIST - “It is always better to see [or hear] than not, the imagination an unruly force at the best of times...She spelt out the connection between anxiety and compulsive behaviour, the growth of neurological pathways from repetition, the release of feel good chemicals like serotonin from repetitive activity, and the rise in discomfort when the compulsion was thwarted...Helping isn’t only about identifying problems. More often than not it means clearing a path, so someone can proceed. Without being able to go forwards, problems get stuck in dark corners...if you see your clients as problems and not as people with possibilities then you’ll tend to find their potential. You must respect the problems they present to you as theirs. It’s not your job to hang them up, to see people as the things that have been done to them. If you walk with them while they make their way over things, which is often time consuming, they will do their own healing.”

[Laura Rittenhouse · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a strange little book but enjoyable. It's not about anything big, more about something very normal. A woman decides to leave her husband, though she still cares about and respects him (her discovery that she is in love with another woman is the turning point). She believes she can remain an integral part of her son's life even when she leaves him behind and moves from thier small town to Melbourne with her lover. She takes a job that leads to a good promotion and a lot of politics.

This is a book about getting by. The protagonist, Monty, is not particularly stong, she's not especially likeable, she doesn't have a clear plan. And she struggles. Trying to find a balance between motherhood, a new relationship, a career and a life takes a lot of Monty's energy but not a lot of her thinking - at least she never seems to make clear choices and stick to them.

I liked this book because it was real. The heroine is very much like someone you might know, might work with and could like but also could easily get irritated with. The writing flowed well and it was an easy read.

Nothing earth shattering, the book could be put down, but well worth finishing.

[Belinda Rule · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, but the early poor impression did not improve, unfortunately. Feels like a clinician's memoir by someone who has not yet mastered writing in a successful fictional voice, and needs to be gently counselled to put the thesaurus down. So many misused words and butchered idioms!

There are few proper scenes, only endless summaries. Few of the characters come into clear focus, and the colleague characters seem like villainous caricatures. There is no arc over the course of the book, no story question that is ultimately resolved. I was left frustrated and impatient.

Positives: the clinical content was interesting!

[Kaitlyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

One word: meh.
Sigh, really wanted to enjoy it but the blurb did not match the story. I wanted to know more about how she fell out of love with her husband for another woman. That would have been interesting! But because that happened at the start, the whole story was about her job. That would have been interesting too if it wasn't solely about that.
A very easy read and well written but I felt nothing for the characters and couldn't even picture them well in my mind as they weren't written deeply enough.
Not disappointing or bad, just expected something else from the story given. As I said, meh.

[Jen Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not actually going to finish this although it's short and not difficult to read, and it's not that it's badly written, it's just that I feel like I'm being told not shown and I have such a great pile of books that I want to read which I keep looking at.

I feel bad - I haven't given this book much time, and I wanted to enjoy the story, but perhaps it's just not the time for me right now. Perhaps I should have placed something more dense between Floundering and This Too Shall Pass? Perhaps I'll try it again one day.

[Rachael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short novel about a woman undergoing life changes. Nothing particularly pops out to me, even though the details of her work life as a psychiatrist in a government funded organisation were interesting (bureaucracy rules, right?). Not every novel needs catastrophic upheaval.

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt like a very close autobiography of a psychologist (almost a diary entry style) which relayed her realistic and difficult work circumstances and also the struggle of personal changes with her sexuality and therefore her relationships with her friends and family.

[S'hi · Rating 3 out of 5]

easy flow, in familiar territory - physically, emotionally, vocationally.