I was misled by the seemingly ominous ellipsis in the title of this book. It annoyed me that it was there, mainly because I interpreted it as ominous in the first place. I took it as “She has seen some shit,” with the ellipsis meant to emphasize that it was some serious shit. I envisioned a gritty novel about a promising young girl suffering sexual abuse and coping with its consequences as she came of age. Taken that way, I thought it was completely unnecessary. That’s not how one uses an ellipsis. It continued to bug me as the book sat on my kitchen counter waiting to be read. The title would just feel so much better without that punctuation hanging there.

I guess I gave the author too little credit, because the ellipsis made a lot more sense once I actually opened the book. It was about a girl/young woman’s (non-abusive) relationships with men. The title corresponses to the chapter names so that, together, they read “What she saw…in [guy’s name].” Okay, that works. It made me feel a little better. Now I could get on with my reading in relative peace.

What She Saw… follows Phoebe Fine from middle school to her mid-twenties, and mostly deals with her relationships across this time period. An intelligent girl with a gift for language and the violin, it seems like she has a bright future ahead of her. But beneath her privledged upbringing and educated mannerisms lurks naivete and a host of self-image issues that lead her down a destructive path as she looks to a series of questionable male influences to validate her as a person. In a tale of middle-class dreams gone wrong, Phoebe’s story is often funny, sometimes sad and sometimes cringeworthy.

As a character, Phoebe seems to have a lot of issues for someone so average. Her parents are musicians and lovers of classical music, but still manage to send their children to a prestigious prep school. She takes on multiple extracurricular activities, has a penpal and gets her parents to drive her to the roller rink on the weekends. However, it seems that, from an early age, Phoebe measures her worth in terms of her relationships with boys. Her female “best friends” play disposable, minor roles, and she has a new one every chapter or so. Where she feels it’s necessary, she tells lies to make herself seem more attractive to prospective dates. In an attempt to remain thin and “attractive,” she develops bulemia. She seems to continually be drawn to the “wrong” guys, from the class clown to the out-of-her-league lacrosse star to the married sociology professor. And whether she actually loves any of these guys is debatable. She seems to achieve every conquest she sets out to make, and those conquests make her feel good. Yet when she finds that the relationships aren’t all that she wishes, she tries to “punish” these men, often by behaving in self-destructive ways.

So what happened? What wires got crossed, damaging Phoebe to the point of being unable to maintain a healthy relationship with herself or others? Phoebe’s sister, who has a very minor role in the novel, seems to play a big part in Phoebe’s constant need for validation. She’s mentioned only a few times, briefly, but it’s always in the context of Phoebe’s resentment toward her success — her ivy-league degree, her successful career, her fantastic marriage. Phoebe perceives her parents’ disappointment in their younger daughter, even though they never voice it. Never feeling that she can measure up, she seeks approval from the opposite sex, because if she can’t be successful then at least she can be lusted after.

But does she grow over the course of the novel? It’s not really clear. At the end, it almost seems like she’s achieved a sort of experienced wisdom about relationships. But since it ends on a new beginning, the reader can’t really be sure if this is the start of something better and more fulfilling for Phoebe, or if it’s the entrance to a road that leads to more of the same. It leaves the reader hopeful, I suppose, but it doesn’t feel like any resolution has been reached.

Prose-wise, I thought that What She Saw… was done very well. Rosenfeld’s language was natural and captivating, and that’s mainly what kept me reading this book. Phoebe’s character was pretty unnerving at times, but the story was written well enough that I decided to stick around to see what she did next. Was it worth it? I don’t really know. This is one of those books that I don’t feel I can form a strong opinion about. My feelings on this novel extend to, “Yep, I sure did read it.”

Was it a valuable read for someone in their twenties? I suppose it shows that people’s mistakes don’t have to define them. People can change. People can grow up. For some of us, it takes a little longer. It also shows the dangers of placing too much emphasis on what others think — when you base your sense of self-worth on the opinions of others, you’re going to have a bad time. Maybe I wasn’t too thrilled with this read because these are things I feel I’ve already learned.

And for what it’s worth, I would have chosen a title without an ellipsis.