Beat by Amy Boaz

Yet another novel about yet another woman facing an identity crisis. Frances cheats on her long-suffering husband with a creepy beat poet. She abandons one child and hauls the other to Paris with her to escape her mistakes. While in Paris she neglects her child and even tries to lose her. Frances is filled with angst, self-centered, untrustworthy, and so forth and so on. An all too familiar story that has been told dozens of times. The author does a good job telling it, it's just been done to death. I just finished "Loving Frank" by Nancy Horan - same story, and a better novel.

Ninety-five percent of this book is about the unlikeable Frances and her affair with her creepy poet. The other five percent is what kept me reading - the unanswered questions. Is her lover in jail? Why is he in jail? What happened to her lover's lover? Is her lover cheating on her? Why did Frances flee to Paris? And please, please can Frances be punished for the suffering she is causing the reader?

Ultimately it all fizzles at the end. We don't really know the answers to the questions because Frances is telling the story and she is so confused she doesn't know herself what happened. The only good thing is that the novel is less than two-hundred pages long - the pain is over quickly.

Link to Amazon: Beat