This book was being reviewed a lot on Instagram last year, and most people seemed to like it so I thought I'd give it a go. On the front cover, the British writer Nina Stibbe is quoted as saying that ' Rachel Joyce is our own Elizabeth Strout ', and I immediately thought; please don't say that. No-one can be compared to Elizabeth Strout! I can see where Nina Stibbe is coming from because the eponymous Maureen Fry is a grumpy woman of a certain age with a wonderful husband who inexplicably loves her dearly, and that is exactly the premise for Strout's character Olive Kitteridge. Maureen Fry is the third book in a series of three novels, which can all be read independently, although the same characters appear in each one as Strout's characters do in her books. Sadly though, Maureen Fry is nowhere near as complex as Olive, and although the reviewer for the Observer thought the book was ' Deeply moving and life-affirming ', it didn't ...