It's a cool premise. "I am Having So Much Fun Here Without You," is being marketed as a reverse-love story. In the fallout of an extramarital affair, a man tries to win his wife back.

Various subplots and motifs enrich the central anti-couple: a Harry-Met-Sally style montage of old married people talking about their decades-long relationships, an exploration of how the artist-husband's early work was significant to the marriage, the vast differences in both sets of parents' reactions. A clunkier bit that compares the Iraq war with regrets in relationships falls flat.

Ultimately though, it just didn't deliver what a good novel has to: reader investment in what's at stake. Maum's philandering protagonist isn't just unlikeable, he's unmemorable. Ultimately, I didn't buy the narrative arc of reconciliation, but even worse: I didn't really care what happened.