Book Review: Courtney Maum's I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You

Richard Haddon, the protagonist in Courney Maum's debut novel I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You has done something rather unlikeable: He has had a long affair with a woman essentially because he's bored with his beautiful French wife and their life together. Richard's wife, Anne, only senses the affair after Richard's lover dumps him, and Richard leads her to believe it was only a one-night fling. Later Anne finds a stack of letters from Richard's lover that shows it was a long affair, seven months long, and she kicks Richard out. Richard admits Anne had done nothing to deserve his transgressions; she hadn't left him lonely, mistreated or abused him, or had a line of lovers herself. He just couldn't say no when he opportunity presented itself.

It's hard to root for Richard Haddon. He is an artist who has compromised his art in order to make sales after a gallery owner sees one painting and suggests an entire series. Richard complies, but then includes a painting that is sentimental to Anne in the show and it's the first one to sell. When Richard has his moment of realization over his colossal mistakes and failures, he thinks if he can get the painting back from the buyers he can convince Anne to take him back. One of the novel's more interesting sequences comes when Richard visits the home of the two men who purchased the blue bear painting, and they describe themselves as Pagan Continuists who must have the artist into their home to be sure the spirits align themselves correctly. They have energy readings done on the art so as not to disturb the flow of the household, and because the energy from the blue bear painting is so good (at least initially), the couple refuses to return the painting. As a gesture of goodwill, however, they send with Richard an enormous fertility sculpture, which is a recurring embarrassment for Richard as well as a source of laughs for the reader.

In hopes of winning back Anne's affections and reuniting with his wife and five year-old daughter, Richard goes to almost comical lengths. At one point he creates an elaborate drawing of an animal in sidewalk chalk on the pavement outside their home, but before he can finish, a police officer takes him in for questioning since that same animal has been showing up in political graffiti around the town. I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You has its moments of levity among the more serious marital drama. Set in Britain and France in the early 1990s, it also allows Richard to use in his art the first Persian Gulf War as a metaphor for failed relationships.

The larger questions the book asks are more serious: can a marriage that was once good be saved? How much forgiveness is justified, and at what point do you call a relationship dead and move on? This is not a novel I'll talk about often with young adult readers in the high school library. It's most definitely an adult novel with grown-up themes, including on-page and descriptive sex scenes. Not that upper level readers couldn't handle the novel; they most certainly could use it as a cautionary tale for their own lives as they move into adulthood and marriages of their own. But the novel will appeal more to adults who've had the experience of seeing their own marriages crumble from neglect over the years, or who at least know the difficulties of keeping a long-term relationship fresh and interesting.