I bought this book on a whim and am almost done with it but since I'm in the mood to write a blog, I'll write a random review now.
I'm not saying buy this book, necessarily. It's very amusing, which is nice. It's also fascinating in the horrifying way that, say, a train wreck is.
The Eddie in the title, a middle aged man with a much loved wife, a few kids, and a passel of grandchildren, decided to submit his spit for DNA testing. He wanted to find out if he was Italian, or Irish, etc. etc.
The results were unexpected. It turned out the man he thought was his father (Edwin), wasn't his father. His biological father Marshall was another businessman in their small community of Orange, Texas.
His official dad (who wasn't really his father) and his bio father were both deceased when all this came out.
Eddie discovered he had a whole bunch of half siblings. His biological father was extremely promiscuous. (And actually, his father Edwin was too. Both families were extremely dysfunctional. Eddie himself, until he met his wife, was also promiscuous though he was totally faithful to his wife, which is a good thing.)
It is a very, very funny book. You wouldn't think it could be, but the main author (Christina) manages to infuse a whole bunch of humor into their hunt for answers.
Here's the unnerving thing, though. At some point, one of Eddie's true half sister's handed him a huge box of letters, which were filled with love missives from a whole bunch of different women to Marshall, Eddie's biological father.
These women were apparently crazy in love with Marshall. They were sleeping with him, they were sending him heartfelt letters, they were over the moon about him.
And he was playing them all. He was just all about scoring, all about seducing other men's wives, and the more important the man, the better the score. It was totally disgusting. In the case of Eddie, his mother (while married to someone else) was impregnated by this Marshall person.
As a Christian, I am firmly of the belief that sex is meant for marriage. So yeah, I think any kind of sex outside of marriage is unhealthy. I realize in this day and age, this is an unusual perspective.
The especially tragic thing with Marshall was that he wasn't just having one night stands with women who knew it was a one night stand. He (while married) was having numerous affairs with various women who believed he and she had something really special going on, that he was going to leave his wife for her. And there were so many women like this.
Yuck.
I guess I'm thinking that having an affair with a married man is just always a bad idea. How is this not obvious? He was married to someone else, he had kids with other women.
I am a cautious person. Of course, my religious beliefs are a big part of how I view sexual relationships but even apart from that, I just can't imagine taking the RISK of having an affair with a married man. It just seems STUPID.
I'm in a mood, obviously. I probably sound rude. But it is just crazy to me. I guess I have a deep and abiding skepticism about people. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like a lot of people. I do. But when I think of this smarmy, very charming man managing to get a whole bunch of women to sleep with him it makes my skin crawl. You really can't trust people if you don't know them pretty well, I think. And I believe that if a man is willing to have an affair with a woman, that shows his morals are skewed from the start. And if a woman is willing to have an affair with a man, her morals are skewed.
It does go both ways.
Off track a bit -- I just finished Elementary, a fun mystery series about Sherlock Holmes in modern times in New York City. Mostly it is great except, you guessed it, for the views of the main characters about sex. They do have random sex with various people.
But interestingly enough, even in that show, where random sex is considered normal, affairs are always portrayed negatively. Often they are the root cause for a murder.
So I think even in our very sexually free culture, affairs are usually frowned upon. So don't do it, anyone!
Ok, enough. This was a weird post.
It is a very funny book though.
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