PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe protagonist of Courtney Maum’s debut novel, I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, is really, truly hard to like ... To be clear, Richard is not in any way an antihero. He’s not evil; he’s not terrible. He is a regular guy who has made the sort of despicable errors that regular guys make all the time ... I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You is less a study of a marriage dissolving, or even of a man dissolving, than a lament for what is damaged possibly beyond repair ... Living alone and missing his family, Richard flounders, and so do we. So much is happening, but it can be difficult to be invested when we find ourselves as unsure of Richard’s worth as he is, and perhaps a bit unsure if we care terribly whether Anne will have him back. Richard is not exactly repentant enough, or not in the right ways. He’s self-absorbed, self-pitying and not a little whiny ... This novel is not all work and no play. Maum’s descriptions of the Paris art world are entertaining, and there is sex — real, full-on, who-put-what-where sex. Maum is funny: the kind of funny that is mean and dirty, with some good bad words thrown in. And she has a satiric eye for artsy pretension ... Fortunately, Richard’s marriage is not dead, just seriously wounded. It’s all the more enticing for that, as Maum asks whether a broken marriage can be put together again, whether mistakes can be forgiven, whether redemption is finally possible for Richard, even if we never really cared for the guy in the first place.
