Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller

This book was one of the books that I picked up last fall when Borders was closing.  I liked the book quite a bit, but honestly am still a little baffled why.  I have read books before where infidelity was central to the story, but none quite like this.  The book tells the story of one women, Sylvie, during two different times of her life.  When Sylvie is younger, she becomes a secret keeper of her mother's affair.  That story by itself was well written but when we heard Sylvie's story as an adult and how she finds herself in a situation very much like her own mother.

It is an interesting tale of mother and daughter relationships, marriage, tragedy, loss and grief.  I couldn't put the book down because I just needed to know how it was going to end.

I didn't however rate it very highly on Goodreads.  I gave it 3 out of 5 stars; marking it as "liked it".  I suppose I could have given it 4 out of 5 stars just based on the fact that I couldn't put it down, but I just couldn't.

I am lucky that I don't personally have any experience with infidelity in my marriage.  I have people in my life that have experienced the devastation caused by infidelity and am so grateful that I can't even imagine myself in that situation.   I don't know what the national statistics are on infidelity (and I don't think I really want to know to be honest) but I there is no way that it could be as high as it is in this book. There is not an adult character in this book who had not been involved with someone outside their marriage.  I think it was so hard to be to believe that it made it difficult to buy into the story as it went on.

It was very well written; there were many times that I read a sentence and had to stop and reread it because I loved how the sentence was crafted but I don't know how many books I could read with this particular theme.  It is the first novel by this author and I will keep my eye out for anymore that she might write..but might not pick it up if it is about the same topic.