Alan Opts Out
by Courtney Maum
I’ve been an avid reader since I was a little kid, and with the exception of the occasional book report in middle school where I was forced to talk about a book I read, or occasionally chatting about a book with my adult children, most of what I’ve read has been in a bubble of bookshelf and me. I didn’t really start consuming book content online until last year, and have never really had a friend that reads that I’ve shared my reading preferences with until the beginning of this year. I would just read a book and move on to the next one with very little interaction with anyone.
I recently read this very popular book that had rave reviews across the internet. Everybody was reading it, there was already a movie in the works, there were hundreds of people in the queue on Libby, and in general people seemed to just love it. I thought it was stupid and the story didn’t match the blurb, which to me is really annoying. I found some fellow haters online, watched their content, and then just sort of moved on (though I am still definitely on a quest for a good Trad Wife story). That friend that I just mentioned – she also hated it.
I promise that this is coming back to the book.
A while back, my Kobo reader did an update and it prompted me to answer questions about my favorite books so that it could make better recommendations to me. Based on the questions it asked, the three books I submitted to grow recommendations from were Sky Daddy, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and This Tender Land. A recent weird girl book, a long-ago very mainstream series that I’ve reread multiple times, and a coming of age story that’s dear to my heart because it was recommended to me by my son and we had some lovely conversations about it. As the Kobo reader was giving me recommendations mostly for books I’d already read (including the rest of the 💕Shopaholic series and The River We Remember ❤️ ), it also recommended Alan Opts Out. The synopsis seemed interesting so I put it on my wishlist, then immediately went to Libby to see if I could borrow it. A very short wait later and I was reading Alan Opts Out.
It was a great recommendation for me, as I’ve been in marketing & leadership roles and often wanted to just opt out. Actually, some people might think that what I’m doing now (college prof) is a bit of an opt out and maybe it is. The story was well paced and silly, and I think really worked from the point of view of someone who is totally burned out on corporate marketing bullshit. Alan was entirely relatable to me even if the story wasn’t 100% believable. It’s kind of a “here’s what I dream about doing” story for people on the hamster wheel that can’t actually opt out. A fantasy novel more than a realistic story, perhaps. Or a weird dream that someone who is overworked and feels under-compensated might have.
I also loved and hated the Vivian character (Alan’s wife), probably because I saw so much of my younger self in her. Husband off doing his own thing, not focused in the direction that she wanted him to be going with their family… yep. I did a lot of shopping in that era of my life to compensate for whatever it was I was compensating for, and the way she bought stuff for some idealistic future was so entirely what I know I did for many years. So whatever weird algorithm took Sky Daddy, Shopaholic, and Tender Land and got me to Alan… well done. I loved it.
You might like Alan Opts Out if…
- You have worked in marketing and feel like you sold your soul for a YOY increase or tried to convince consumers that a ridiculous product was not just a necessity but worth paying huge amounts of money for and hated every minute of it. This story is for you.
- You describe your life as being on the hamster wheel and see no way of reasonably getting off and want to live vicariously through someone who bails on his own advertising agency and moves into his child’s playhouse (loved that part).
- You are a mom/wife that’s trying to create a life that your partner feels detached from but helps you connect with the children that you don’t see as much as you’d like while you’re also trying to just have something for yourself. If you have no idea what the alien man next to you in bed at night is doing, thinking or feeling 99% of the time, you should read this.
That friend that I mentioned in the first paragraph, did not like it. 2/5 stars from her. We’ve had other similar likes/dislikes, but no two readers are the same; our book Venn diagrams aren’t two circles on top of each other, they just overlap in places that make some conversations interesting.
There are a lot of stories out there. Books, tv, movies, fan fiction, what pops into your head as you’re trying to sleep… so many. No one story works for everybody. I just finished a romance novel about a woman who went to work for an English Premier League Football team that I can’t imagine people enjoying unless they have some understanding of Football (soccer) or maybe are fans of Ted Lasso. I sometime forget that we’re not as tribal as we’re often thinking we are. And I think that’s particularly the case with art & entertainment. The important thing is that you enjoy what you read and if you aren’t enjoying it, just DNF it because life is too short to read books that aren’t bringing you joy.
