What is ticky-tacky anyway?

I don’t know that you have to read The Big Picture yourself, but I admit that the sudden reverse of fortunes in the middle of the plot caught me by surprise.  I thought I had the book pegged.  The protagonist & his wife are frustrated artists that find themselves, in their mid-thirties, living in the suburbs just like everyone else.  Well, maybe not just like everyone else: Ben has put his photographer’s yearnings on the back burner to make $300k+ per year as a lawyer.  Beth, the wife, is a frustrated author, but doesn’t have to hold a day job due to her Mister’s provision—which, of course, contributes to her frustration.

We join the characters as their marriage is crumbling.  They hate their lives.  Why did they end up as suburban Conn. Gap-shoppers when they swore they’d expire in Greenwich from drug overdose first?  For the same reason as everyone else: children.  As the author rather heartlessly puts it, “Accidents will happen.” 

At this point in the story it’s difficult to feel sorry for either of the Bradfords (Dig the WASP name!), but, to be blunt, it’s all the wife’s fault.  She has already left the marriage.  Game over.  She’s just hanging around as a nominal mother—not that the kids don’t have a nanny all day anyway.  However, her husband gets a “second chance”— a very fast-paced, traumatic chance—to start over & become what he believes he was meant to be.  Beth, by default, gets the same chance.  Both end up falling back into pretty much the same life as before, only not quite as good, & must be grateful for what they have. 

For all our longing for drama, most people end up the same.  We compromise our ideals, we get jobs, we scramble for a good place to raise our children— the little lives that anchor us to the ground.  When all is said & done, the author—rather vaguely—confesses that, if we love our families, we have to become parents.  We should not necessarily sacrifice ourselves wholesale, but parents are stable, are gainfully employed, are largely bourgeois.  Really cheerful, eh?  Yeah, those of you who don’t have kids don’t believe me, or Douglas Kennedy.  Haven’t you noticed that everyone turns out pretty much the same?

EK's Rating:  2 1/2 out of 5 Stars.