Until the Real Thing Comes Along

Until the Real Thing Comes Along

by Elizabeth Berg

Ballantine Books, 1999

ISBN: 0-345-43739-X

I don’t usually talk about myself in my blog posts but for some reason I think it may be important this time. Or maybe not but I’m doing it anyway. I’m at a place in my life where the idea of marriage and a family freak me out completely. Children are loud and fast and I never know what they are about to do. Shopping for friend’s baby showers can give me migraines. Those little shoes are creepy and why are diapers so expensive?! Marriage makes me just as uncomfortable and luckily my boyfriend and I have agreed to opt out.

That said, Until the Real Thing Comes Along is about a woman in her mid thirties who is desperate to get married and have babies. Lots of babies. She thinks about marriage and babies all the time. And I loved this book!

This story is about Patty who, as previously mentioned, has always wanted to get married and have lots of children. She falls in love with Ethan, they get engaged and right before her life gets too perfect, she learns that Ethan is gay.  On top of that, she is still pressured by her family and friends to get married, or at least figure out a way to have a baby, father or no. Unable to fall out of love with Ethan, Patty finds that she has to settle for a less than picture perfect life.

This book is a quick and easy read. Although there were a few places when the character would talk endlessly about tiny baby feet or something and I would think, “Yuck!” reading it was pleasant. On the jacket there is a quote from the New York Daily News, “Reading it is like eavesdropping on an intimate female chat.” I think that’s what I liked the most. Because even if I don’t have the desperate desire to marry and procreate, I love listening to other people’s problems. Even  though this book was at times outrageously silly, Berg still obviously takes her subject matter seriously and even in those silly moments there is a naturalness about her storytelling that makes it endearing. My advice is, pick up this book if you want to read something adorably sweet and silly.