I always swear I am not going to enjoy one more “city dweller moves to country, hilarity ensues” books and yet here I go again. Mullen is a writer for Entertainment Weekly whose wife has developed a fixation for getting a country place. Mullen is hesitant, she is whole hog into it. He grudgingly goes along with her plans and they wind up with a place in upstate NY and travel six hours every weekend to get to and fro.

The scenes are so stereotyped at some level they’re perfunctory and yet Mullen is very funny. he manages to talk about his neighbors and their attemps to orient him to country ways without taking on the snotty tone that so many people do when attemping this sort of writing. He seems to be a man who genuinely likes people and getting to know what makes him tick. I can imagine this makes him a good celebrity writer and it also gives him a good eye for stories like this one.

I’ll also have to admit, I saw myself [with me and my boyfriend trying to beat the other young couple to the Yellow Store on Sunday to get the last copy of the Times] more than a few times, so I felt a special warm spot for what he and his wife were up against and also how rewarding their time in the country was.