Being Committed : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Anything Anna Maxted Writes I Read
Review: . . . and Ms. Maxted's writing is seldom predictable. Yes, this is chic lit, at it's belly laugh - knee buckling best. But just because I adore this gal's humour, her finesse at character descriptions ( people you can wrap your arms around from words on a page) isn't diminished. Hannah is our heroine in this story. Jason the fiance. Jack the ex-husband: ten years gone, ex husband! Quite frankly, I couldn't take Jack seriously until Hannah's Dad (& favourite person in the world) disturbs the mix. Many personalities contribute to Hannah's dilemmas: her mindspeak always the funniest observations of people and their tendencies. In the end, she does seem to resolve her past as much as any of us have ever had any kind of control once it's our past! And I embrace her future.

Rating:
Summary: Funny and a litte poignant
Review: Being Committed is an appealing and well written novel. Hannah, the female protagonist is simultaneously funny and touching as she more or less romps her way through her romantic, professional, and family lives.

The story opens with Hannah refusing a marriage proposal from a long-term boyfriend, only to change her mind a few weeks later. As a prerequisite to reuniting, her boyfriend insists that Hannah deals with some issues from her past that are preventing her from being emotionally open. Hannah starts by meeting with her ex-husband, Jack, who she married when she was 20, and divorced five months later. Gab, Hannah's sister-in-law, agrees to help Hannah become more feminine, and in doing so, Hannah develops a closer relationship with Gab, her brother, and their baby. As Hannah does some soul searching, and has some difficult conversations with both Gab and Jack, she begins to question more of the assumptions in her life, including her distant relationship with her mother, her exceptional closeness with her father, and even her career choice of private detective.

Don't let this description of how Hannah begins to find herself lead you to believe that Being Committed is not a funny novel. It is light, entertaining, and filled with feminine antics and wiles. This book is a step up from much of the "chick lit" genre, and I think most readers will enjoy the funny bits, identify with Hannah's coming of age, and relish the love stories.


Rating:
Summary: Anna does it again
Review: I have read all of Anna Maxted's books and Being Committed is another success. She has such a great way of telling a story that is both extremely funny on one hand but at the same time talking about real issues that all women face. I loved this book and highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Started out great, lost a little steam later on...
Review: I really wanted to like this book, because I really like Anna Maxted, whose book, Getting Over It, got me hooked!! I did not read Behaving like Adults or Running in Heels yet, but I found a kindred soul in this character, because she reminded me of me!

Hannah is in her early 30's, who, in the very first chapter, gets a proposal from Jason, her boyfriend of 5 years. Does she really want to get married? No, not really, but "every woman likes to be proposed to, even if she means to refuse."

She has been married once before, at the age that most girls are starting out in college, to Jack, and she cheats on him. Somehow, this puts her off the marriage idea for a while, and she is kind of a committment phobe. She uses her Private Investigator (her job) ways to find out why she turned out this way. Which means, "coming to terms with her past." That's it, her family. Her mom and dad have a couple of secrets, that she stumbles upon, and she realizes why everyone turns out the way they did.

I'm all for the "become aware of your past, heal your present." I feel like that character in that way. Maybe it was because this book could have said what it said in 100 less pages. (It was almost 400 pages long.) Maybe it's also because we compare the authors works to the one that we read last, (in my case, Getting Over It) and it's hard to measure up. That book was very funny, this one only so-so. I always give an extra star or two for the premise, what pulled me in, and what the author was trying to do.

To me, this book was just OK, with a lot of not needed extra characters, but I look forward to Maxted's next effort!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Story - drama and family issues
Review: This book is by far much better than Ms. Maxted's last novel (Behaving Like Adults). The main character (Hannah) is likable enough and humor is peppered throughout the novel to lighten it up a bit. Parental infidelity is a major theme throughout this novel. As a result of her mother's infidelty, Hannah has a fairly disturbing relationship with her father, her best friend, and her lovers. I think the story may have been slightly more believable if the character had been about 5 years younger. Overall I would rate this novel 2.5 stars (but I can't give a half star) because the material is not as light as I'd like it to be for something that is considered to be chick lit. Just my personal opinion but Ms. Maxted would do well to steer clear of issues such as parental infidelity, rape, repression and the like if she wants to grow her fan base in this genre. The base content is somewhat distressful.

Rating:
Summary: Good...but...
Review: This book was really, really good for the first part...not so great in the middle and returned to good at the end. I laughed aloud at parts where Hannah encountered her rival, Lucy for Jason's attention. I don't think this book was quite as good as some of her previous work.

Rating:
Summary: An intelligent story of relationships, past and present
Review: This was my first Anna Maxted novel, and when I started reading it, I thought it was yet another lighthearted "Brit lit" read. Main character Hannah Lovekin is not a big fan of Chinese food or marriage--so it is a surprise when her sweet, tolerant boyfriend of 5 years, Jason, pops the question. Hannah turns him down without hesitation, but when she begins to miss him--especially after he gets engaged to someone else less than 4 weeks later--she rethinks her decision. She then promises Jason that she will do whatever it takes to repair their relationship, but Jason's list of requirements is a bit more than she bargained for.

At this point, the carefree tone of the novel changes, and more serious issues are introduced. One of Jason's demands is that Hannah make peace with her ex-husband, Jack, with whom she shared five months of matrimony at age 20. Jack and Hannah's marriage came to a screeching halt due to a mix of infidelity, immaturity, trust issues, and misunderstandings, and they have not spoken in 10 years. In the process of trying to sort things out with Jack, Hannah must come to terms with a series of issues from which she has been running all of her life, including her parents' marriage, her estranged relationship with her mother, and her own ability to express real emotion.

I enjoyed this book more and more as I continued to read further. I found Hannah's transformation to be completely believable, as Maxted does a nice job of laying out the process for the reader and detailing all of the factors involved. Although this was my first Maxted book, it definitely won't be my last, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this 4 1/2 star novel to others.

Rating:
Summary: To commit or not to commit
Review: Traditionally, commitmentphobes were men who feared being tied down with a wife and half a dozen kiddies. But in the 21st-century age of equality, women can be just as phobic as men. And that's the core of "Being Committed," a frothy and amusing tale about women who fear getting in too deep.

Hannah Lovekin has no desire to get married -- she had a brief union with Jack when she was twenty, and it lasted less than six months. Now she's ten years older and wiser, and has a wonderful, adoring boyfriend. Then Jason asks Hannah to marry him, and she turns the poor guy down. Ba-dum -- she decides she does want him after all, when he falls into the arms of a different woman.

Jason still wants her too, but he wants her to deal with her inner demons first -- and that means dealing with Jack. So Hannah contacts her ex-husband, who is still nursing wounds of his own, and begins to struggle through her own hangups. But things get even more complex when Hannah begins to get confused over what man she actually wants....

Maxted has a disarming tendency to tackle not-so-frothy topics in a frothy way. In this case, it's how your family, friends and relationships shape how you feel and think. While the ending is obvious to anyone who has read even a few chick-lit books, it's the twisting ride to the finale that counts.

Maxted has a pleasantly breezy way of writing, and she does a good job of digging into Hannah's soul. And it's engaging to see Hannah examining her relationships with her parents, her brother and his wife, and her ex-husband. The psychoanalysis-on-top-of-froth makes the narrative a little top-heavy at times, although Maxted does balance it out well overall.

Hannah would be an easy character to mess up -- with her hangups and repressed fears, she could easily have been annoying and pathetic. Instead, she comes across as a bit messed up, but a likable, self-deprecating woman. Jack and Jason both come across as three-dimensional and pleasant, although some of the secondary characters (the parents) are lacking.

Maxted's fourth novel is a pleasant chick-lit diversion, with a dose of psychoanalysis and family angst. A nice light read with a few heavy chapters.