Reviewed: Being Anti-Social by Leigh K Cunningham

Throughout 2014, Eliza will be participating in the Australian Women Writers Challenge on behalf of Hopscotch Friday.

Mace Evans, the female protagonist of Leigh K Cunningham's award winning Being Anti-Social, could be described as an Aussie Bridget Jones. She's in her late thirties, single, has an interfering family, dysfunctional group of friends, a slight drinking problem and an unfortunate habit of sleeping with her co-workers.

However, Mace is also mourning the love of her life – her ex-husband Ben, who died from leukaemia. Mace struggles through life as she watches her friends and family find love and contentment, which now seem to elude her. She’s still carrying the guilt of the affair she had that led to her marriage breakdown, and her inability to make it right with Ben before he died.
 

Being Anti-Social is about the loneliness of grief and what happens when you find great love and happiness only to lose it. Although it brought me close to tears at one point, this novel also has a great sense of wit that made me laugh out loud. I found familiar the group of girlfriends who you’ve known so long that sometimes you don't remember why you’re still hanging out with them, but still you love them like the sisters you never had. I could also relate to Mace’s tactics for getting through tedious work meetings; 'I slip in and out of awareness, returning only when I hear a C-level voice, in particular the CFO, my boss. For the rest of the time, I nod and make to-do lists, for example, grocery lists, holiday plans, Oscar quotes etc.'
 

In fact, I think it is the author's firsthand experience as a lawyer and senior executive that makes her descriptions of life in the modern workplace all the more real, and her takes on the characters found in nearly every office, a humorous edge. It’s nice to know even the senior echelons of organisations feel the same as us filling out the ranks. This has to be one of my favourite aspects of the book.
 

There are a lot of great moments in Being Anti-Social, and the tone is near perfect blend of cynicism, humour and emotional depth. However, for me its downfall is that some of the characters are not as well developed as I would like, such as ex-boyfriend Rudy and Mace's sister Shannon. Also some aspects of the plot are not wrapped up in a way that left me satisfied. In the end this left me wondering about some of the characters, why they were included at all, and what happened to make them act the way they did?

Being Anti-Social is no Bridget Jones' Diary. It is an enjoyable read and an interesting exploration of how someone might deal with life when it doesn't turn out the way they planned. It’s a book that managed to make me laugh and cry, and any book that can do that is worth a read.

Being Anti-Social by Leigh K Cunningham is independently published through Vivante Publishing.

-Eliza Murphy