Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont

A review of Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont.  Post may contain affiliate links. 

Among the Ten Thousand Things: A Novelopens with a letter written to Deborah, wife of Jack.  The letter is written by Jack’s girlfriend.  The girlfriend he began sleeping with last June.  The letter is an  introduction to what is in the box that accompanies the letter.  In the box is a huge print out of a folder called “Chats” - all the correspondence between Jack and his girlfriend.  All the dirty little conversations, texts, emails between the lovers.

The only problem is the doorman hands the box to Jack and Deborah’s daughter Kay.  She reads a few of the notes and eventually shows the box to her brother.

“It was the smallest decision Kay could think to make, smaller even than doing nothing, which felt like deceit.  Showing Simon would be like showing herself, because he was theirs too.”

Simon reads a few of the notes and then shows them to his mom and from there the family slow disintegrates.  You read how each character handles it their own way.

The author switches to a point in the future at a seemingly random point in the story and then switches back.  I don’t know what this was supposed to accomplish, but I found it confusing.

Overall, it was well written, but dragged at points.  I like the idea of the plot, I just wish it had been written with characters that I could care more about.