Thought the narrative voice was very strong at times, but her innermost thoughts maybe sometimes got lost within the opinions of others.

This was such a lovely book; I really liked the way in which it was written.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

I loved this book. This wasn’t the kind of thing I would normally go for, but I loved it. It was written with so much compassion and kindness, I felt I knew the characters – flaws and all – like my own family.

I completely understand and empathise with Sam's behaviour in Wayward. In menopause you don't want to be touched or bothered or anything. You want to be left the hell alone while you work out the next phase of your life.

A Whim…?
Samantha Raymond’s life is unravelling. Or, it seems to be. Just as she seems to have it all. On a whim, so it seems, she leaves it all behind. Completely. A totally readable account of one woman’s struggle and a depiction of an underrepresented group in all it’s tragic glory.

I really enjoyed this. An unusual perspective and a great piece of writing. Sam's life was a complicated one and she's a bit lost. Great representation of an underrepresented female age group. Ally is also interesting with her own quirks. Found their relationship intriguing.
One incident is particularly striking and stuns.
Lots to think about.

Perplexingly bad. Second hand embarrassment whilst reading. At first I enjoyed the irony of the protagonist recognising that they wanted to not be like everyone else, but then the lack of self-awareness was just painful.

Thanks NetGalley for the arc.

We don’t get many books with menopausal women as the main character, so I was very excited about the publication of Wayward. Reading reviews, after I finished reading, showed how diametrically opposed people’s opinions are about it. Demographically I should be the type of reader to embrace this book, lauding Sam’s courage to take stock of her life and move in a completely different direction in order to fulfil herself. Unfortunately that was not the case. I found I had no empathy with Sam whatsoever, largely because her character used way too much jargon, which actually made me shout out loud in frustration and the relationships she had with her mother and daughter seemed to me to be shallow.
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in return for an honest review.

It's a book you can love or hate but it's not to feel anything about it.
It made me laugh, moved and couldn't put it down.
I liked the humour, the social remarks and the well written characters.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Smart, political, witty, occasionally raging novel about mothers and daughters, aging, perimenopausal stuff and an existential crisis. I liked it , but sometimes felt that Spiotta wanted to include too much social issues here. Especially the Clara Loomis letters/diary bits near the end bugged me. What was the point of that?
Thank you Little Brown and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

What a stunning book! I loved the writing and there were so many moments where it broke my heart. I can't wait to read more by this author.

Imagine having a midlife crisis about what it means to be a woman, a wife, mother, daughter, good person who is working on recognising their power and privilege. Now do all of that during Trumps term in office. That is exactly what this book is.

It’s complex and written with intricacy, its like reading the protagonists inner thoughts, but also the authors political commentary. I wasn’t sure where this was going and if I am honest if it was for me or what I was going to get out of it. But slowly I stopped thinking that and found myself in deep, I was building frustrated relationships with the characters and questioning their decisions. I definitely wasn’t dying to pick it up but when I did, I didn’t really want to put it down.

I wrote a note to myself about three quarters of the way through -feels a bit like a white woman’s guilty awakening in Trump era - I still feel the same and I still feel it was clunky in some places, it is a book trying to do and tackle a lot of things, and at times yep it felt a little clunky, but it also really worked.

We mainly hear from Sam said white woman but just when you have had enough of her (and I did have enough) the author brings in Ally - Sam’s daughters voice just when it was needed. Bringing context and challenge to the conclusions I had drawn on Sam. There were part of the book I could have done without, some characters I am still trying to work out. I’m ok with that, I still enjoyed it, still felt something and any book that can do that is a good book in my mind.

To summarise for me this book is clever and well done, its a lot of things; a feminist essay, a political commentary and a look into the relationships women hold with ourselves, our body’s, mothers, daughters and others. I can’t wait to see women who are at different stages of life read this one to see the different things we all take from it.

I found this intriguing rather than absorbing or particularly likable, it examines three generations of women in one American family: Lily nearing the end of her life, Sam experiencing menopause and her daughter Ally. For much of the book the focus is on Sam, an affluent, white housewife, who suddenly jettisons her life in the cloistered suburbs for a rundown, Arts and Crafts house in edgy, inner-city Syracuse. Dana Spiotta seems to be reclaiming the mid-life crisis novel so firmly linked to a particular form of masculinity, a territory carved out by men like Bellow and Roth, and others who've followed in their footsteps. What makes Sam’s character stand out is her departure from the script that's formed her life up until now’s not precipitated by abandonment or an affair of her own, but by a house, a symbol of another path from the one she’s been pursuing. A space which creates a link to an America profoundly other than the one she’s inhabited until now. Although, as a symbol, I found it quite problematic, it suggested an idea of a settled past that'd been buried or forgotten: life as art morphed into life as easy consumption of pre-selected markers of social status, like the Eileen Fisher clothes Sam rifles through in stores tailored to her demographic.

Sam’s decision to reinvent herself coincides with the election of Donald Trump, presented as a kind of wake-up call for a particular grouping of Gen X Americans, a rupture that exposes numerous, previously-submerged fault-lines. Racked with a rather rudimentary type of guilt, Sam sees herself as an archetypal, complacent white woman who’s managed to evade or avoid the traumas or the challenges many of the people around her have had to face. Although it’s hard to view her as any form of middle-aged, white everywoman, her wealth, her sheltered existence mark her out – reading about her kept making me want to check statistics, she’s so unlike the women in their fifties I’ve read about or know, certainly the many in the U.K. either still working but dealing with a massive gender pay gap coupled with growing age discrimination, or those losing or on the brink of losing their jobs, unlikely to find new ones, their pension prospects poor, marginalised economically as much as anything else. But this is clearly a deliberate stance by removing financial worries - Sam’s husband continues to fund her lifestyle - workplace issues or relationship woes, Spiotta can dispense with a great many of the harsher realities of aging for women in Western societies and adopt a more streamlined perspective; but in doing so, it seemed to me, she reinforces many of the stereotypes circulating about women like Sam, casual assumptions about automatic privilege in all areas of their lives. Sam’s juxtaposed with her mother Lily who’s dying but, again, Sam, unlike many women in her age group's not now facing life as a carer: baby boomer Lily’s another relatively wealthy character who conveniently requires no actual or material support. Instead, Lily and Sam’s daughter Ally shift the novel's central concerns from midlife crisis to slightly unorthodox rite of passage, in which different life stages are represented in a rudimentary, compare-and-contrast style.

Sam appears to be an unusually naïve, hollow individual - given her background and her intensely analytical, self-conscious manner - her break from her former world involves trying on readymade online identities, taking up with other, would-be rebellious women and pondering the physical changes sparked by menopause. Although I suppose she might also be seen as the outcome of a specific phase of consumer capitalism, someone in search of an ever-elusive, ideal of an authentic self? Certainly, in terms of literature she fills a traditionally empty space, the point just beyond the end of the narrative, too old for the marriage plot or the coming-of-age story, in the wrong book for wise crone or similar. The only clear role Sam seems to have been scripted for is mothering, and much of the book is bound up with her obsessive approach to parenting, and her subsequent attempts to step back from this and allow Ally breathing space. The first two-thirds of the novel are curiously static, despite the shift in Sam’s material circumstances, Spiotta adds in commentary on contemporary American culture from MAGA, immigration, gun control, to the rapid deterioration of cities like Syracuse but I found these asides and references unconvincing, they seemed overlaid rather than integral to what’s ultimately quite a conventional story. Spiotta brings in themes and elements common to her earlier work: relationships with technology; the external things that can define us; alongside a mish-mash of genres from embedded letters and essays, to text messages. She also brings in a fictional figure Clara Loomis, part of an actual historical community known as Oneida, one of the many Utopian bodies founded in nineteenth-century America. Loomis’s role relates to issues around patriarchy and about cancel culture; what freedoms are on offer to women; how we judge past generations and by extension present ones. But it felt too much like a plot device, as more disturbingly, does Sam’s epiphany brought about by witnessing the murder of an unarmed, young Black man by police officers. A plot development I found difficult to fathom, it’s not clear to me whether this event is meant to be taken seriously or intended as some kind of ironic commentary, either way I was uncomfortable with its use as a means of adding momentum or weight to Sam’s character’s experiences. So, although I think Spiotta's an interesting, skilful, at times even inventive writer, overall, this left me fairly cold. It could be because I’m so obviously not the implied reader here, I’m not white and, crucially, I’m not American, so it may be that for others this taps into a zeitgeist that I can’t fully comprehend or adequately decode.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Virago for an arc

Sadly I battled with this one. I loved the idea of a story featuring a woman approaching menopause wanting more from life but just couldn't connect with the book. It was difficult to understand why Sam felt the way she did and how she figured her decisions would change things. The subplots also felt as if they did not fit into the main narrative or go anywhere. The addition of her daughter's narration lifted the story and helped to understand Sam a bit more but overall the book was not for me.

This is the first book my Dana Spiotta I've read but it absolutely isn't going to be my last. I adore her easy, subversive style and I flew through Wayward with a smile on my face. Our protagonist, Samantha, has just begun to relax into the joy of 'having it all' when a triad of terrible events bring her back to reality: she has to cope with a distant daughter, an ailing parent and, the cherry on top, the election of Donald Trump. After falling in love with a ramshackle house, Samantha decides to say goodbye to her life and take a chance on renovating a property she attempts to love back to life. Chaos, warmth and a lot of soul-searching ensues in this touching, darkly funny novel that I can't wait for readers to fall in love with.

A huge thank you to the publisher for this early review copy!

I really enjoyed this. An unusual perspective and a great piece of writing. Sam's life was a complicated one and she's a bit lost. Great representation of an underrepresented female age group. Ally is also interesting with her own quirks. Found their relationship intriguing.
One incident is particularly striking and stuns.
Lots to think about.

I am afraid I struggled with this book. It just didn't click with me. hope other readers enjoy it more. It was too slow for me.

Wayward is a book that will speak to many, many middle-aged, middle-class women who do not see themselves as fitting the stereotypes. It's a book about the frustration and anger of being 'invisible' and 'voiceless'.

Why oh why are publishers not publishing more books about and for middle-aged women? There are enough of us around! And we're getting tired of having to all intents and purposes disappeared off the face of the earth once our looks went and our waistlines thickened and our kids grew up and left.

This is a feminist book, in the 'original' meaning of feminist, not whatever reactionary nonsense is being spouted around that term these days. And as such, I think readers who are not in a similar demographic to the protagonist might not really get this novel and its underlying messages.

So I think it's a marmite book that will inspire both love and loathing, depending on the reader's perspective. I really appreciated the portraits of different 'wayward' women, from Clara Loomis, to Sam's mother, Sam herself and her daughter. How they are/were each trying to be themselves while under the threat of male violence, which in Sam's case is an invisible, looming threat represented by the election of Donald Trump.

I also think it's telling that the only actual serious violence that occurs is when a young, innocent Black man is shot by a white, female police officer, and Sam's attempts to be heard, to speak up on his behalf.

No doubt some readers will interpret this as a voice of white privilege and be disgusted at someone appealing for anything like sympathy for someone like Sam, a well-off white woman who is not at all invisible or voiceless compared to many other people. But I think this is missing the point. There are many ways to be silenced in the world we live in, many ways to be compartmentalised and ignored. It's unhelpful to propose that some are more silenced than others. To exclude some people from being deemed worthy of empathy because they are not within the right category of oppression. Exclusive, inclusive.... As James Thurber once said, "You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards."

Samantha Raymond cannot say what it was exactly that lead her to buy a house and to move out of the suburban comfort zone with her husband Matt and their teenage daughter Ally. Maybe Trump’s election, maybe the feeling of menopause hitting her or just the fact that she spends her nights awake pondering about her life and all that is connected to it: motherhood, mortality and the country she lives in. Via the Internet, she connects with some radical women whose notions are new to her. But sorting out her new life also means getting more and more away from her old life and her daughter. Has she ever been a good mom? Didn’t she do all that was necessary to bring Ally up? And what did she use her one life for actually?

In her novel “Wayward”, Dana Spiotta portrays a woman at a crucial point of her life. She made some decisions that now come under scrutiny. It is not only the outer, visible elements of her life but much more her inner convictions that have to stand the test. Her first move sets in motion a chain of events that bring her further away from all she has known for so many years and it remains to be seen where this will lead her.

What I liked most was the combination of metaphors the author uses. The old house that Sam finds and is attracted to immediately mirrors her body. Just like the cosy new home, life also has left traces on her body. Just like she renovates the house, she starts to train to get stronger. However, all the renovation cannot hide that the years have left their marks on it and some things simply cannot be redone.

Just as she analyses her complicated relationship with her own mother and also with her daughter, she analyses the state the country is in. The opposing parts become obvious through the segregation between the white and better-off parts of town and her new place which is quite the opposite. Coming from a protected life, she is now confronted with crime which has always been a reality for other parts of society, but not the suburban housewives she has known for so long.

The novel has a clear feminist perspective. Sam volunteers at a small museum that was the home of a 19th century feminist who ignored societal constraints and followed her ideals, also Sam’s mother is an independent woman, whereas she herself had given in to a life that she now is running from. Her daughter also tries to rebel against Sam’s life choices and wants to free herself - in her very own way. All women make choices that have consequences, all woman have to decide between conformity and rebellion, they want their life to be meaningful – but what does that mean and what is the price for it?

An interesting read from a point of view that is slowly expanded to show the bigger picture.

Nothing happens in this book. There is no plot which normally attracts me as a fan of depressed woman fiction and introspective fiction. However what really put me off this book was the very poorly done dialogue. I love books with minimal dialogue . Usually it’s just the recollections of a conversation. I appreciate that it’s hard to do dialogue well but the conversations in this book are full of filler words and fluff that we don’t need to know as readers.We need to know how people felt and their thoughts and I don’t personally care as much about what exactly they said.This book centers around a divorce so there’s a lot of dialogue where people are fighting and it comes across as terribly cheesy.
This book drips with clueless old person white privilege in a way that drives me totally crazy. I suffered from a complete failure of empathy with the main character which may be down to the fact that I am not going through menopause like the main character.
The worst part of this book is that there is a tiny almost throw away subplot where the clueless white older woman protagonist witnesses the murder of a black child at the hands of police officers which is an incredibly traumatic triggering event that is not used as a way to discuss justice around this topic. It is just used as a ploy in which this woman thinks more abut herself and her own issues.