The Astronaut Wives Club

What can I say? Who doesn’t love learning about astronauts, even if it’s in a behind the scenes kind of way? It’s awesome to think that the processor in my phone is more powerful than the computer that landed men on the moon. Learning about the trials and tribulations the first men in space faced is fascinating. It’s too bad this book doesn’t discuss anything of the sort.

From the start, this book had a disjointed feel to it. While some of the stories could been interesting on their own, they mostly had little to do with the topic being discussed. Maybe some people wouldn’t mind that style, but I do.

The wives themselves come across as vapid narcissists, more interested in their hairdos than anything else. Even after reading the whole book, I still don’t know which wife is what. They’re all basically the same. One commented about being like a Stepford wife, and I agree, even if the wives themselves didn’t. Very little actual personality comes through, and what little does was shallow and self absorbed. More than once, I wanted to reach through the pages, shake one of them, and tell them that there are some things more important than their marriage or what clothes they’re wearing. Their husbands going to the moon or exploring space are a couple such things. I simply couldn’t find it in me to care about any of these women. Maybe some of it is a generation gap – thank ALL the gods I wasn’t alive in the 1950s! But other than being a female, carbon-based life form, I have nothing in common with these women. They seem like entitled, spoiled brats. I left high school behind when I graduated from it. These folks seem stick in it, cliques and all, and it is entirely unappealing in adults.

This was, unfortunately, the kind of self-important memoir that makes me generally hate reading memoirs in the first place. I can’t recommend this one at all.