Just between us, you’re a cliche

It’s hard enough being a suburban mother these days without books like Maria Beaumont’s “37.” From “Mommie Dearest” to soccer moms, the world loves pigeonholing us matriarchs into easy stereotypes: tired, nagging, put-upon harpies or selfless, nurturing uber-Madonnas. Over the last 15 years, there’s been a tsunami of mommy lit, most of which has set the record straight. Using humor and honesty, the best of it pulls us from the shadows of our laundry rooms and reveals us as the snowflakes we truly are: unique and glittery, full of ideas and desires beyond simply fitting into our pre-pregnancy jeans.

When one of our own comes along and throws us back into the lint trap, it hurts. Beaumont, a British novelist, gives us Fran Clark, a desperate housewife in the London suburbs having a premature midlife crisis as she faces her 37th birthday. We find her glumly haunting the shops, looking for something to wear to the birthday bash her husband is throwing for her. “I know I’m kidding myself that an expensive new outfit will miraculously transform me. There’s no hiding the unwanted grays, the creases that I can’t really call laughter lines . . . and the stomach that can’t be sucked in no matter how hard I breathe in.”

For Fran, it’s a short hop from feeling fat to full-on mommy malaise. In her swan dive toward bottom she hits all the cliches -- the Chardonnay abuse, the philandering husband (complete with damning hotel bill in his pants pocket!), the hothouse children, the politically correct school with the snarky, backbiting moms, the straight-talkin’ girlfriends and, of course, the guilt! Hausfraus everywhere may recognize the details, but as banalities pile up, the sense of familiarity is replaced by a grind of predictability that ultimately gives rise to indignation. No! There’s so much more to us that that!

This is not serious fiction, it is chick lit in a housedress, and like those martini-illustrated tomes in pink, it cheapens us by association. Rather than yanking back the gingham curtain to reveal giddy truths about motherhood, Fran is dull -- and toxic, just the sort you avoid on the schoolyard.

The novel’s first person, just-between-us-girlfriends tone reveals almost nothing. Here’s a typical interior monologue of Fran’s: “What an inspiration Natasha is. She manages to combine total self-interest with getting a balanced breakfast into her kids. She looks like a model, yet her children remain happy and nourished. . . . I’ve decided to drive up to the Broadway. I’m on a mission to finally find something to wear to my party, which is -- don’t panic, deep breaths -- TOMORROW!” This gush reads more like a Tiger Beat fan letter than the thoughts of a grown woman on the brink.

As her many perfectly obvious “secrets” pile up, the book becomes a series of scenes in which she reveals nothing to anyone, then feels badly about it. She wades through a failing marriage without a thought to counseling, suffers from “silly panic attacks,” and when a friend confides that she takes Prozac, Fran is shocked: “I take a sip -- okay, a gulp -- of wine and begin slowly. ‘I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but . . . isn’t Prozac like a sort of pick-me-up?’ ” At this point we’ve entered some bizarre, alternate fantasy universe where people whisper about antidepressants and Prozac isn’t totally five minutes ago.

Beaumont has an oddly wandering narrative eye. She focuses on the tedious comings and goings of her characters and skips over dramatic scenes. A life-changing bungee-jumping experience is recalled, then goes unchronicled. Instead, she thinks: “But I did it! Afterward, we had a long, sun-soaked lunch. Lobster, ice-cold beer, and laughter as we relived the experience over and over.” The reader is also stiffed of meaningful conversations between characters. After 183 pages of neurotically holding back, Fran finally tells her friend Sureya about her marital problems, but this is what we get: “When she arrived home, I told her about Richard. All of it. Now that I’ve finished, she looks as if she might spontaneously combust. I have never seen her so shocked and angry. Shockingly angry.” (Reading this passage, I was shocked and angry too.)

Beaumont’s main gimmick is to open on Chapter 37 and count backward to Chapter 0 (really!), when Fran hits her shallow bottom. She awakens from a blackout drunk and -- lo and behold -- it’s the first day of the rest of her life! The chapters count upward from there, as Fran miraculously gets her life together without the help of Prozac, a 12-step program, marriage counseling or even a hand tremor. Issues she’s previously identified -- her father’s alcoholism, her postpartum depression -- magically melt away along with the extra pounds. Inside of two weeks she has it all back: her waistline, a contrite husband, happy, successful children, friends who value her, a reinvigorated career and, most important, her sass. It’s Shake ‘n Bake literature, and it’s enough to make a real-world mom want to drive her minivan into a lake.

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Erika Schickel is the author of “You’re Not the Boss of Me: Adventures of a Modern Mom.”