We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article. "Same As It Ever Was" (Doubleday), by Claire Lombardo, the bestselling author of "The Most Fun We Ever Had," follows the upheavals in the life of a complicated woman unprepared for a mid-life crisis. Read an excerpt below.
"Same As It Ever Was" by Claire Lombardo Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now. It happens in the way that most important things end up having happened for her: accidentally, and because she does something she is not supposed to do. And it happens in the fashion of many happenstantial occurrences, the result of completely plausible decision making, a little diversion from the norm that will, in hindsight, seem almost too coincidental: a slight veer and suddenly everything's free-falling, the universe gleefully seizing that seldom chosen Other Option, running, arms outstretched, like a deranged person trying to clear the aisles in a grocery store, which is, as a matter of fact, where she is, the gourmet place two towns over, picking up some last-minute items for a dinner party for her husband, who is turning sixty today.
This one is a small act of misbehavior by any standards, an innocuous Other Option as far as they go: choosing a grocery store that is not her usual grocery store because her usual grocery store is out of crabmeat. Afterward she will remember having the thought—leaving the first grocery empty-handed—that such a benign change to.
