Your Roots Are Showing

Elise Chidley
5 Spot (2008)
ISBN 9780446178143
Reviewed by Danielle Feliciano for Reader Views (11/08)

 

I picked up “Your Roots are Showing” fully expecting a chick-lit type of book with some depth (a la Jane Green or Carrie Kabak).  The theme of unhappy housewife finding her marriage over and then reinventing herself is not a new idea.  However, put into author Elise Chidley’s hands, this theme is so exceptionally written that it is in a class of its own.

Lizzie Buckley seems to have it all.  She has a gorgeous husband, a rolling estate in the country, wealth, and wonderful three-year-old twins.  Under the façade of perfection, there are cracks that eventually grow into canyons.  Her husband may be gorgeous, but Lizzie is too exhausted to want to have any physical interaction with him.  In addition, she could never really believe she “landed” such a man as her James, and that insecurity weaves its way into her day-to-day life.  Her rolling estate and wealth derive from her in-laws, whom she has a chilly relationship with, and she never feels quite at home there.  Her twins are wonderful, but exhausting as all kids can be.  Feeling fed up, Lizzie fires off an email to her sister, venting about all that is wrong with her world. However, the email is accidentally sent to James himself, and thus begins the final breaks in the marriage.

James leaves Lizzie and the kids and refuses to discuss anything but divorce.  She moves out to the country into a ramshackle cottage, first thinking of the move as temporary, then realizing this has a very real possibility of becoming permanent.  She falls deeper and deeper into the depression that has haunted her since her twins were born, but it takes her best friend Tessa to finally put a word on it.  Lizzie, under Tessa’s guidance, takes up running as a way to fight the depression.  Being overweight and out of shape, Lizzie is resistant, but eventually finds that running is cathartic for her.  As she transforms her body, she struggles to come to grips mentally with the consequences of her email.

Though there are background stories and characters to add depth (Ingrid the neighbor, Boris the gardener and potential love interest, the in-laws…), this truly is Lizzie’s story and hers alone.  It is the story of how she took full responsibility for the breakdown of her marriage, and how she did all she could to repair the damage.  It is the story of how she fought back from a depression that all but consumed her.  Finally, it is the story of a woman who in a moment found everything she lived for taken away, and her path back to getting her life back on track.  Lizzie’s character was true to life, raw and real, and her story was so heart wrenching that it brought up a lot of emotions as I read it and related to her more than I would have liked to.  “Your Roots are Showing” by Elise Chidley is truly outstanding and I cannot recommend it enough.

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