This is Just Exactly Like You by Drew Perry
Did you ever know someone who consistently made a complete mess of his life but you just couldn’t help loving him anyway? Meet Jack Lang, the central character in Drew Perry’s This is Just Exactly Like You. His wife has left him to move in with his best friend, his best friend’s ex-girlfriend is putting the moves on him and his mute six year old son with autism has started speaking in complete sentences – in perfect Spanish.
Jack buys real estate on impulse, starts home improvement projects he can’t finish and generally makes so many ill-advised decisions it’s hard to keep up. But through it all you find yourself rooting for him and you slowly realize that Jack may not be as messed up as he first appears.
Ostensibly a novel about suburban ennui and modern marriage, the story is much, much more. It’s a well-drawn portrait of the ways men and women think differently, how some people need to control while others can just BE. As the parent of a child with autism, I also felt Perry’s depiction of raising a child with challenges was spot on, from enduring touchy-feely therapists to rebuffing rude stares, we see Jack learning to love his son just as he is without expecting more, which is not a bad thing for any of us to learn. The book also provides plenty of laughs along the way and it may just leave you with a desire to live as impetuously as Jack does – just to see what happens next.
