Life After Forty

I finished this book, but only due to some unwritten reader's code. I wonder, with so many wonderful books available, how one like this gets published. Is there really a demograph of desperate over 40 women large enough to provide a market for such books?

Unfortunately, few of the divorced "over forty" women I know have the luxury of financial freedom; most struggle to pay their rent and car payment.

I found this story unrealistic and boring. Just a tale of a divorced woman, getting her life back together, with few hardships involved.

This book is an easy read as you are quickly grabbed by the story. In the first few pages the woman, Christine, who is about to turn 40, gets a phone call from her husband saying he wants a divorce out of the blue. He didn't even have the courage to do it in person. She is in shock and we go with her on the journey of figuring out why and remaking her future. The book is translated from the German but the translation is seamless. Actually you would never know it is a translation except for the somewhat odd first names, the names of the cities and the occasional references to the Euro. Other than that it was intriguing to see how very much like us they live - same TV shows, same music, etc. I read it quickly, in two sittings (stayed up a bit too late), just because I wanted to know where she was going. She has wonderful support from her women friends and also from her family. I didn't realize until almost the end that the book was fiction because it certainly reads like a memoir. I don't like too much info before I start a book so I seem to have ignored that information and it was easy to ignore because it seemed so down to earth and realistic. And I think that is its charm - portraying the shock, bereavement, gradual adjustment and all the other emotions that befall a person in such a situation. She also shows how some of her women friends are often faced with similar relationship issues but make different decisions. Many women will love this book and find its insights very helpful.

[Spoiler Alert - don't read this review if you don't want spoilers]

I was very excited to get this book. I knew it was an English language translation of a German best seller and I was very interested to read it. I expected a great book.

I agree with other reviewers that the language is clunky - it isn't a bad translation really, it just doesn't flow that well. The language was sort of annoying in parts.

But my main complaint about this book is that it is kind of boring & the main character isn't likable.

The main character, Christine, is someone I would normally have sympathy for and interest in. She's a woman about to turn 40 who is dumped unexpectedly by her husband of 10 years. She discovers that he has been having a 4 year affair with her life long best friend, and he moves her friend into their house immediately after he demands the divorce. It is a painful situation that could have been a great story.

Instead, it is written sort of journal style and manages to be very boring.

It is hard to believe the main character too - she has TONS of friends and supportive family that come to her rescue, meeting her every need, and treating her like a fragile child through the whole thing. She has lots of money, gets to buy herself a new apartment in the "big city" and gets to buy all new furniture, expensive hair cuts and lingerie, and just generally is a spoiled brat.

The vast majority of women going through divorce don't have this type of experience, unfortunately, and I found it hard to relate to.

She spends all of her time chain smoking and getting drunk [usually alone]. And crying about her husband, who she really didn't seem to like that much to begin with until he wanted the divorce.

Then we get to the part where this newly dumped woman inexplicably has sex with another married man on the beach. What?!!! So, she's been whining and moaning the whole way about how awful it is that her husband cheated on her and how horrible her best friend is for screwing her husband, etc - and then she turns right around and does the very same thing to someone else? [and this is apparently supported by her close, supportive group of friends and family who encouraged her to go on the date with this married man to start with.]

Yeah... whatever. I tossed the book in the trash. The stupid main character could have gotten hit by a train at that point for all I cared. Maybe I'm not European enough to "get" this book, but I don't have time in my life to read a story about some whiny, pathetic hypocrite.

Christine's husband decides to end their decade long marriage suddenly. Christine is shocked and looks to her friends to help her through. Christine does surround herself with loved ones and friends to help her through her time of crisis, but she also realizes how strong she is and how to pull herself through. She has those "two voices" we all have in our heads. The sensible one vs the fun one - it is funny to hear them squabble about the choices Christine is making.

It may sound like the "same old" story about divorce and love affairs, but Dora Heldt is able to put some cute twists into the story that make you really root for Christine.

Life after Forty by Dora Heldt

Imagine while having a girl's night out over your sister's house and while watching the movie Notting Hill, and drinking white wine the phone rings. Your sister hands you the phone and its your husband. Bernd has called to ask you for a divorce, how do you keep pressing forward after ten plus years of marriage blows up in your face with no warning?
Christine's comment to her husband Bernd after he tells her he wants a divorce is truly tell telling of her initial shock "everything was fine this morning." What does this all mean? she ask.

We are all on a journey whether it is one we choose or one chosen for us. Unfortunately for Christine hers was chosen for her. With the support and love of her friends she begins a wellness journey of healing, and putting the pieces of her life back together. Life after Forty is a realistic read that shows what destructive and irresponsible decisions look like. Nothing happens in any type of order when you are dealing with the devastation of being cheated on. But you make the best decisions you can. Bernd was able to walk right into his new life while Christine well she had to start over creating one as a single forty something year old women.

If you have ever been cheated on you know exactly what Christine is going through and you feel for her. Heldt, writing of her emotion are very vivid. The moment Christine knew; the reader didn't have to guest about what was going on in that scene. You knew she just learnt that her friend of twenty five years was the reason her husband was asking her for a divorce.

The dynamic of relationships are the premiss of Life After Forty. Our decisions we make and how they effect those around us. With every page I turned I couldn't wait to read what Christine was going to do next, or how her friends would get her to the next stage of her new life.

I recommend this book to all readers, because we cannot move and groove on this side without leaving fingerprints on others. How we move forward after leaving them is this thing we call life, and sometimes life after forty can be magical in a different way.

Missy
Readers Paradise

A woman gets dumped after 10 years of marriage, how will she recover? I anticipated reading about her attempt, but found the answer very mundane. She will rent an apartment, she will buy things, go to the post office and get a mailbox, etc etc. It is difficult to understand the initial spark between Christine and her husband, Bernd, much less to see what kept them together for 10 years. That said, I found her reaction to the circumstances of Bernd leaving her very understated. There are many characters introduced for no reason, and are often so unmemorable, I kept having to look back to figure out how these characters were related to Christine. In short, the book falls flat, being merely tolerable, but without provoking thought or becoming a page-turner, similar in spirit to a made-for-tv movie you can't remember the title of. I would pass on this book...perhaps something is lost in translation from German.

Christine has been married to Bernd for close to a decade when unexpectedly, she gets a call while out of town. He wants a divorce. She soon discovers the reason behind her husband's decision. It's another woman, but not just anyone. The other woman is a good friend and neighbor. This story is about her putting back together her life. Unfortunately, her life is less exciting than mine. I didn't understand the point of the book and though it wasn't written in a journal format, that's almost how it felt--the recordings of a boring person's life.

Another thing that bothered me was how blasé the characters were about affairs with married people. Christine's husband cheats on her and she has an affair with a married man. Also, her friends think this is perfectly acceptable behavior.

LIFE AFTER FORTY is published by AmazonCrossing. Similar to the AmazonEncore program in that AmazonCrossing uses customer feedback and other data from Amazon sites to identify exceptional works that deserve a wider, global audience. The big difference is books from AmazonCrossing are originally written in a foreign language. Amazon acquires and translates the book for an English-speaking market.

Maybe there was something lost in the translation or maybe I'm not the target audience. Either way, I couldn't warm up to Christine's story.

Given the book description and that this was supposedly a bestseller in Germany, I was expecting an entertaining, poignant read but I struggled through 100 pages and finally gave up. Life is just too short to spend on such bad writing. I don't know if it's the translation or the original book, but this is just painful to read--the dialogue especially. But even more than the bad writing, it's rather hard to feel so much sympathy for the main character. Yes, she is going through a divorce which I know is painful, but she has all these friends, gets a gorgeous apartment with all new furniture. She has a great job making more money than her ex. She and her husband had grown apart so so it wasn't that much of a shock. The character and the writing just did not engage me at all. I just had to put it down.

Note: This is the third book I have reviewed with the amazon imprint (this is amazoncrossing and the others were amazon breakthrough) and I'm sorry to say I have been very unimpressed by all of them. I love amazon as a bookseller but perhaps they should stay out of publishing. Personally, this is their last try for me.

This was one of those books that you escape into for a few happy hours - not too deep, no big moral, just some pleasurable hours engrossed in a book. When Christine is informed over the telephone that her husband of 10 years wants a divorce, she is thrown into a tailspin. Although she knew that her marriage had become stale, complacency had kept her from looking too hard at the situation. When she is given no other choice, her priceless friends get her going, and she dives in, finding that life after divorce, and after forty, is very liveable after all. I highly recommend this book for a beach trip, or a rainy day curled up on the couch!

After I finished this book I thought about Christine for awhile. I am not spoiling anything when I say she she is much better off and learns much about herself after she gets dumped.

Enjoyed the setting and the characters very much. Was a very fast read which is always a good compliment for an author.

Thank you for a great book about women.