Technically, Why Did I Ever is a little longer than the page limit for Novellas in November at 210. But I found it in a list of recommended contemporary novellas and read it for this event.
Part of me doesn’t want to present a cogent plot synopsis for this book, because it isn’t presented cogently. Instead, the novella is written in fairly unconnected snippets, some of them titled but in a way that seems to have nothing to do with the snippets.
So, maybe not a synopsis, but here are some of the things that are going on. Melanie Money (we don’t learn either name for quite some time) hates her job as a Hollywood script doctor. She lives somewhere in the Deep South but occasionally flies to California for bizarre meetings about an inane script.
She has two grown children. Mev, her daughter, is methadone-dependent and has trouble keeping a job. Paulie, her son, is in New York under protective custody before testifying against a man who held him prisoner and viciously abused him.
In her home in a small Southern town, she has two very odd friends—the Deaf Lady, an old lady who is not deaf, and Hollis, a driving instructor who seems to spend most of his time in Money’s house.
Money has a boyfriend in New Orleans named Dix who calls a lot but from whom for a while she is keeping her address secret. She doesn’t regard him as very smart, but he seems to care for her.
Aside from the states of her various relationships, in which every character seems to respond to what is said with a non sequitur, the ongoing plot is about the state of the script and whether Melanie will be fired and about Paulie’s situation.
Melanie herself obsessively covers everything in her house (literally everything, even her books) with a coat of paint or alphabetizes everything, seems to drive aimlessly around the South, and worries about her missing cat and her kids.
It’s a very disjointed account, but it’s quite funny at times, especially about the movie industry.
What? Me Read? 
I loved the humour in this as well!
Too weird-sounding for me!
It wasn’t as weird as some books I’ve read.