Take Shelter

By the Iowa Sea
Joe Blair
Memoir

This book was not what I thought it was about.

When I read the little blurb recommending it in a book review magazine, I thought this was a memoir about flooding in a small town and how all this water affects everyone. Well, turns out that’s only a small part. A teeny, tiny part. The rest is just…odd.

Joe Blair and his wife have settled in a small town in the Midwest and are raising four children. Their youngest, Michael, is severely autistic and they have a hard time dealing with him. Then, out of nowhere, Deb, Joe’s wife, asks if he’s having an affair. They fight about it. Continue to fight about it. So he does start having an affair. And he wants Deb to go out and sleep with other guys. What now? And he wants them to have a threesome. Or something. I was very confused by that point.

This book is just a mess. It doesn’t know what it wants to be. I was more interested in the river and flooding and small town life than his crappy marriage, which is a first for me. But of course, he mostly discussed his relationship and his affair and what happened when he admitted to the affair and how they were going to divorce and then they decided not to and in the end they moved away from the Iowa River, still a couple.

While I appreciate Mr. Blair wanting to be realistic by writing every single exchange during several big arguments between him and his wife, they got really tedious. Because in real life, we repeat things and make no sense and have long pauses. This does not make for great reading. By the end of the book, I wondered why they even got married in the first place and hoped they would divorce.

This memoir about children and marriage is raw and real, I suppose, but not entertaining in the slightest. So if that sounds interesting to you, pick the book up. Otherwise, don’t bother.