50 Books in 2011: The Lonely Polygamist

Book #38 of 2011: the Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall.

I had some sort of vague idea that I'd heard something good about this and so, I read it.

Apparently, I did not find it as funny as I was supposed to (gum in the pubes doesn't really do it for me, I guess), but I didn't really mind. The premise here--a polygamist with 4 wives and 28 children who is secretly working for a brothel owner on construction of a new brothel and struggling with potential infidelity--was interesting enough.

Much like the main character, Golden, we don't see a whole lot of most of the children. Frankly, it was hard to even keep the wives straight for awhile, except for the youngest one, who gets her own point-of-view chapters. This wasn't helped any by the not-completely-linear time-line, which shifted subtly here and there without always being super clear about it. 

I never really cared enough about any of the characters, except perhaps the youngest wife, who I very much wanted to be happy.

I still did like it, though. Go figure.