Review of "Peg, Unhinged" by Teri M. Brown

​Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)

Have you ever had one of those days when you look in the mirror, wonder where the person you remember went, get irritated by people half your age, desperately want everyone at work to leave you alone, forget what you were doing, make some ridiculous mistake you would rather nobody know about, and finally decide that the universe itself may be conspiring against you?
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Peg McMann has had more than one of those days. In fact, she seems to be having an entire year of them.
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Peg, Unhinged by Teri M. Brown is a funny, heartfelt, surprisingly substantial novel about menopause, divorce, aging, friendship, work, family, alcohol, domestic abuse, new beginnings, and the terrifying realization that the life you spent decades building may no longer be the life you actually want. There is a lot happening here, including a collapsing marriage, professional humiliation, a new business, a DUI, community service, a women's shelter, damaged friendships, potential romance, financial problems, and enough personal catastrophes to fill several novels.

Yet if we are being completely truthful, almost all of that becomes secondary because Peg absolutely steals this book.

We could probably spend this entire review talking about nothing but Peg McMann and still have plenty to say. She is insecure, sarcastic, competitive, caring, jealous, hardworking, impulsive, intelligent, occasionally selfish, frequently generous, painfully self-conscious, and sometimes so spectacularly bad at making decisions that we wanted to reach into the book and confiscate her car keys, wine glass, telephone, and perhaps several other objects for her own protection. Somehow, we also liked her almost immediately.

There is something enormously relatable about a protagonist who isn't trying to convince us that she has everything figured out. Peg knows she is becoming a mess. At times, she practically narrates the mess while it is happening. She has different internal versions of herself, including Professional Peg, Crazy Peg, Healthy Peg, Emotional Chaotic Mess Peg, and various others who seem to take turns fighting over the steering wheel. Sometimes the sensible version wins. Other times, she apparently gets stuffed into the trunk while Crazy Peg takes the car for a joyride.

If Hollywood ever adapts Peg, Unhinged, we kept imagining the sort of character Melissa McCarthy might play. We do not mean that Peg literally resembles McCarthy, nor that Brown appears to be copying one of her movie characters. It is more the overall energy we kept getting from her: a fundamentally likable and capable woman whose confidence and insecurities somehow exist simultaneously, who can deliver a sarcastic observation one minute and stumble into an absurd physical catastrophe the next, and who remains sympathetic even while behaving so badly that everyone around her is wondering what on earth has gotten into her. Peg possesses that wonderful comedic quality where you can see disaster approaching from half a mile away, know she should absolutely turn around, and nevertheless keep following because you have to see how spectacularly everything is about to go wrong.

The novel wastes almost no time establishing this personality. Peg is approaching fifty and experiencing menopause, and she is not taking the transition gracefully. Her body has changed. Her hair is graying. Her waistline is expanding. Her memory is unreliable. Her emotions are volatile. Her husband of twenty-seven years, Stephan, has left her. Her children are growing up and pulling away. The reflection looking back at her no longer resembles the woman she carries around in her head, and practically every change seems to give her one more reason to wonder what happened to the person she used to be.

So Peg does something she hasn't done in decades: she starts talking to God again.

The recurring "Hey God" passages are among our favorite elements of the novel. Peg apparently had plenty to say to God during puberty, and menopause is traumatic enough to reopen the correspondence. Her complaints include hormones, aging, body changes, relationships, memory problems, emotions, and the baffling design of the female body. She is respectful enough to acknowledge God as God, but not so respectful that she isn't willing to question some of His design decisions.

These conversations could easily have become gimmicky. Instead, they gradually become something much more meaningful. Early in the novel, Peg mostly wants answers about what is happening to her. Later, she starts asking uncomfortable questions about what is happening because of her. The one-sided conversations become almost like checkpoints along her emotional journey, showing us how her outlook gradually changes even when Peg herself may not recognize that change yet.

Brown is especially good at making Peg's insecurities funny without making Peg herself the joke. Take her reaction to Stephan's apparent interest in younger women. She bitterly observes that they are roughly half his age and half her weight, before adding that she would wager they have about half her IQ too.

We laughed at that line, but it also exposes something genuinely vulnerable about Peg. She is reassuring herself. She cannot compete with these women physically, at least not according to her increasingly unforgiving view of herself, so she retreats to one of the areas where she still feels superior. Fine. They're younger. They're thinner. But I'm smarter. That mixture of humor, jealousy, wounded pride, and insecurity feels extremely human.

We also related to Peg's desire to get to work before everyone else simply so she can enjoy a little peace and silence. Sometimes the greatest workplace benefit isn't the salary, insurance, retirement plan, or free coffee. Sometimes it is arriving before your coworkers and enjoying a few glorious minutes during which nobody is talking to you.

Peg needs those moments because work has become one of the last places where she still knows exactly who she is. She is a highly successful real-estate agent, and for years she has been the dependable one in her marriage. Peg worked. Peg earned. Peg handled responsibilities. Stephan bounced between jobs, unfinished ambitions, hobbies, and get-rich-quick schemes. Peg increasingly came to see herself as the adult responsible for holding everything together while Stephan got to be the fun husband and fun parent.

Naturally, this created resentment. Add menopause, marital unhappiness, two children growing into adulthood, professional competition, fear of aging, and a husband who finally walks away, and Normal Peg gradually gives way to someone she refers to as Crazy Peg.

The situation at work eventually detonates. Peg believes younger agent Kayla has stolen a valuable real-estate opportunity from her. When Kayla wins Agent of the Year, Peg completely loses control. She screams, accuses Kayla of stealing the sale and flirting with both the boss and Peg's husband, grabs the award, grabs Kayla's hair, and ends up being restrained by her coworkers before getting fired.

It is an absolute disaster, and unfortunately for Peg, it is also a public one. The altercation becomes local news, complete with a humiliating article describing the supposedly "unhinged" veteran agent whose husband left her and whose personal troubles have apparently spilled into the workplace.

One of the things we appreciate about Brown's handling of this situation is that the novel eventually confirms Peg was not imagining everything. Kayla really did take advantage of information from Peg's desk and swoop in on her opportunity. Peg had legitimate reasons to be furious. She still had absolutely no right to yank the woman's hair.

That distinction matters because book doesn't excuse every terrible decision Peg makes simply because she is the protagonist. Peg can be wronged and still respond wrongly. Stephan can have serious shortcomings while Peg also bears responsibility for some of the deterioration in their marriage. Her friends can behave badly while Peg also fails them. Monique can misjudge Peg while Peg also carries prejudices and assumptions of her own. That moral messiness makes the novel considerably more believable.

After being fired, Peg decides to create her own real-estate company, Living the Dream Real Estate. This produces another of our favorite little moments when she negotiates office space and describes the haggling as requiring something akin to her left leg and first-born grandchild. It's just a throwaway exaggeration, but lines like this are a major part of why Peg's narration remains entertaining for hundreds of pages.

Then there are the larger comedic disasters. At one point, Peg accidentally puts ear drops in her eyes and contacts Poison Control by essentially announcing that she is an idiot and may have blinded herself. She survives, of course, but now has to continue functioning while looking as though something has gone catastrophically wrong with her eyeballs.

At another point, she decides she can move a mattress by herself. She cannot. The mattress flops around, repeatedly refuses to cooperate, eventually pins Peg against the stair railing, and forces this fiercely independent woman to yell for her neighbors. Brown's perfectly timed observation that Peg considers herself independent and capable while the mattress would apparently disagree had us laughing.

It is physical comedy on the page, but once again, there is character development hiding inside the joke. Peg hates needing anyone. She wants to solve everything herself. She has spent decades believing she has to solve everything herself. The mattress becomes one small, ridiculous reminder that sometimes you need somebody on the other end.

The dating material generates plenty of comedy as well. Peg joins the online dating world partly because she genuinely wants companionship and partly because she wants Stephan to see that other men find her desirable. The results are exactly as graceful as you might expect. She analyzes profiles, panics over messages, wonders what to wear, encounters men who range from promising to dreadful, and frequently behaves like a teenager despite being old enough to know better.

One tiny exchange later in the book particularly amused us. Peg tells Beth that she has a problem involving a man. Two men, actually. Beth immediately reacts with an intrigued "Ohhh!" and Peg has to clarify, laughing, that she does not mean it like that. These little misunderstandings, comments, and reactions give the book much of its charm because Brown does not need some elaborate comedic setup every time she wants to make us smile.

Eventually, one man becomes particularly important: Trevor.

Trevor begins as a real-estate client and becomes Peg's neighbor when he rents the other half of her duplex. Peg is attracted to him almost immediately, although she spends quite a bit of time insisting to herself that dinners, walks, conversations, hand squeezes, and an increasing fascination with what she is wearing are all strictly professional or neighborly. Sure, Peg. Whatever you say.

Trevor works because Brown does not simply turn him into the handsome consolation prize Peg receives for surviving divorce. He has his own history and boundaries. Much later, we discover that Trevor grew up around domestic violence and was himself abused by his father. He later married a woman who became physically abusive after their honeymoon. His caution around Peg therefore comes from somewhere far deeper than uncertainty about dating a newly divorced woman.

This revelation also connects Trevor to what becomes the most substantial storyline in the novel: Peg's community service at Seabreeze House, a shelter serving women and children who have escaped abusive situations.

Peg ends up there because her drinking increasingly becomes a problem. At first, alcohol is simply part of her social life. Gradually, however, wine becomes something she reaches for whenever she is angry, lonely, embarrassed, frightened, or overwhelmed. After receiving particularly upsetting information involving Stephan and their divorce, Peg drinks heavily, runs out of wine, gets into her car to buy more, and is pulled over on the way home.

This is one of the points where Peg stops being merely an entertaining disaster and becomes a legitimately dangerous one. Brown does not treat the incident as just another wacky misadventure. Peg loses her license, faces legal consequences, and is eventually required to complete community service. She has to acknowledge that her coping mechanism has become destructive and that being miserable does not erase responsibility for what she did.

That community service takes her to Seabreeze House, and this is where the novel grows significantly in depth.

Peg arrives carrying assumptions about what abused women are supposed to look like. She expects sadness, silence, frightened children, and broken people. Instead, she walks into something resembling a bustling home, with women cooking, laughing, parenting, studying, and rebuilding their lives. She quickly learns that abuse does not belong to one social class, income bracket, personality type, or particular kind of woman.

Peg eventually becomes a mentor to Monique, a resident with a young daughter named Kiara. And once again, Peg messes it up, which we actually appreciated enormously.

Brown could easily have written Peg as the prosperous professional woman who walks into a shelter and transforms someone's life with her wisdom and generosity. Instead, Peg has almost as much to learn from Monique as Monique could possibly learn from her. Perhaps more.

Peg has to confront her assumptions about poverty, abuse, class, education, employment, dignity, motherhood, and what it actually means to help someone. Their relationship is awkward and contentious. Monique frequently does not trust her. Peg tries too hard. Peg occasionally makes things about herself. She misunderstands boundaries. She genuinely cares, but genuine care does not automatically produce perfect behavior.

Their relationship nearly collapses after Peg invites Monique and Kiara into her home. Peg's longtime friends Kelly and Laura make insulting, classist comments suggesting that Monique does not belong in their beachfront world because she is a young mother living in a shelter. Peg eventually throws them out, but she does not defend Monique quickly enough. Monique recognizes this immediately and effectively tells Peg that their relationship is over.

That scene is important because Peg cannot simply point to her good intentions and declare herself innocent. She failed her friend, and the novel makes her sit with that failure.

Eventually, Peg apologizes, becomes more honest about her own circumstances, and does something much healthier than trying to "save" Monique. Because Peg temporarily cannot drive, she offers Monique paid work helping her get to real-estate appointments. Suddenly their relationship becomes reciprocal. Peg has something Monique needs, but Monique also has something Peg needs.

That difference is enormous. Their relationship begins to feel more equal, and by the end of the novel, Monique agrees to try working as Peg's assistant, with the understanding that she can pursue education or another career if the arrangement does not suit her.

Peg's professional journey similarly comes full circle. George eventually realizes Kayla really did steal Peg's opportunity. Kayla is fired, and George desperately tries to convince Peg to return because the office is struggling without her. Earlier Peg would have considered this the ultimate victory. She was right. Kayla was wrong. George needs her. Everyone finally knows it.

But something surprising happens: Peg no longer wants the exact life she fought so desperately to reclaim.

She realizes that being Agent of the Year is not worth sacrificing her friendships, family, mental health, and the rest of her life. She negotiates a better commission arrangement, a four-day workweek, clearer workplace policies, and an assistant who will also be given enough flexibility to maintain a healthier balance.

This may be the most important change Peg makes. The woman we meet at the beginning believes she needs to get everything back: her husband, her job, her status, her body, her confidence, and her old life. The woman we leave at the end realizes she doesn't need to become the old Peg again. She needs something better suited to who she is now.

That distinction is why the ending works so well. There is no magical reversal of menopause. Peg does not suddenly become twenty-five again. She does not drop thirty pounds, awaken with flawless skin, restore her marriage, win another professional trophy, and walk into the sunset looking like the woman she was decades earlier.

She is still round. She still loses things. Her moods still fluctuate. Her body is still changing. Yet everything that actually matters feels different.

Peg is drinking less and finding healthier ways to cope when life becomes overwhelming. She no longer mourns a marriage that, in retrospect, had not really functioned as a marriage for a very long time. She has new friends, old friends who are willing to try again, a healthier version of her old career, a meaningful connection to Seabreeze House, and the possibility of something more with Trevor.

Our main criticism is that the novel could probably be tighter. It loses a lot of momentum. At roughly 365 pages of story, certain portions become repetitive. Peg becomes upset, drinks or wants to drink, lies to conceal an embarrassing situation, gets herself into another predicament, berates herself, and starts trying to recover. Because these patterns reflect her emotional state, the repetition makes thematic sense, but several episodes could be shortened without weakening her transformation.

Some of the humor is deliberately broad as well. Certain dating encounters, generational jokes, bodily mishaps, and early conflicts with Kayla occasionally feel closer to television sitcom comedy than the more nuanced material found elsewhere in the book. A few secondary characters can also seem temporarily designed around whatever lesson Peg needs to confront at that particular stage of the story.

But here is the problem with criticizing the book for spending so much time with Peg: we really like spending time with Peg.

She overwhelms virtually everything else in the novel, including, in some ways, the plot itself. We remember the DUI, Seabreeze House, Monique, Trevor, Stephan, Kayla, George, the divorce, the new business, and the various crises, but what we remember most vividly is Peg reacting to all of them: Peg trapped behind a mattress, Peg interrogating God about menopause, Peg insulting twenty-something women in her own head because she feels threatened by them, Peg secretly wanting everyone at work to leave her alone, Peg staring at herself in the mirror and wondering what happened, Peg accidentally putting ear medication into her eyes, Peg negotiating away her hypothetical leg and grandchild, Peg trying to convince herself that dinner with Trevor absolutely, positively, definitely isn't a date while worrying about her hair, clothes, house, and even whether she should make the bed.

We remember Peg saying something about two men and immediately realizing how scandalous it sounds. We remember Peg screwing up, recovering, screwing up again, apologizing, laughing, crying, yelling, learning, and continuing forward. That is what makes this book work.

Teri M. Brown has created the sort of protagonist who feels less like someone we merely read about and more like somebody we have met. For some readers, she may resemble a mother, sister, coworker, friend, spouse, neighbor, or aunt. For others, the uncomfortable realization may be that Peg resembles them.

Maybe not the hair-pulling part, and hopefully not the DUI, but the insecurity? The stubbornness? The longing for quiet? The irritation with younger people? The fear of becoming irrelevant? The tendency to compare ourselves to others? The desire to be considered attractive while simultaneously wanting to be left alone? The refusal to ask for help until a metaphorical or literal mattress has pinned us against the railing? Yeah. We know that person. Sometimes we are that person.

Peg, Unhinged is funny because Peg's life is chaotic, but it is moving because beneath all that chaos is an enormously familiar fear: what happens when the person you have always been no longer fits the life you are living?

Brown's answer is ultimately hopeful. You do not have to become your old self again. You can become someone new, and that new person does not have to be perfect to deserve happiness, friendship, love, purpose, or another chance. If she is still sarcastic, occasionally unhinged, a little rounder than she would prefer, prone to losing her phone, and capable of turning an ordinary afternoon into a full-scale catastrophe, that does not make her a failure.

It might simply make her Peg.

By the way, can we just say that we almost completely forgot that this is the same author who wrote Enemy Like Me, a previous OCA-winning book? It's so interesting to note how the seriousness and dire nature of that previous book contrasts with the lighthearted, comedic tone of this book. It shows that Teri Brown has great range as an author!

Check it out on Amazon!