Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About

Mil Millington

Pel Dalton spends his life simply - he bluffs his way through his job at the university and has constant arguments (that he can't win) with the woman who lives with him. Ursula is German, but they live in northern England and their oldest son goes to a Church of England school. He's the supervisor of the IT help desk at the university's Learning Center (library).

When Pel's boss and friend quits and leaves unexpectedly, Pel applies for his job. TSR (the disappearing man) left an unexpected present for him. He finds an envelope with a mirror in it. On the mirror, TSR wrote "watch your back". Pel has no idea what TSR means, but he's going to find out.

Their home is in one of the worst sections of the city. After it is broken into for the third time, Ursula insists they buy another home in a better neighborhood. Despite the insanity at work he now has insanity at home as well. They start house hunting. When they find one they can afford, he knows they will have to fix it up.

Now that Pel has moved into a managerial position, he starts learning things about the university he wishes he didn't know. He learns how Pacific Rim students are recruited. He learns more than he wanted to know about the new construction to expand the Learning Center. He learns what the head of the Learning Center actually does. And he is expected to keep his old job up while taking on the new one as well, "for a few months" anyway. So he keeps bluffing.

Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About wasn't what I expected. First I was expecting "chick lit". This isn't, but if the roles had been reversed and the protagonist was a woman living with her boyfriend and having all the same problems, it would be. It is light and humorous in the same manner as good chick lit. As a female, I shook my head at Pel many times when he was trying to win an argument with Ursula. It isn't going to happen.

As an employee, I had to identify with him. I found the funniest scene in this cute book was the one in his interview for TSR's old job. Pel is a master at obscuring double talk. Even he doesn't know what he is saying all the time in the interview. After that he keeps reassuring everyone that he knew everything TSR knew. It is obvious to him, though, that TSR didn't tell him anything about the job and its details. Who would have guessed what TSR was hiding?

It took me a while to get into Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. I finally settled in when he, Ursula, and the boys took a vacation trip to Germany to visit her parents and ski. When he returns to work the first thing he does is fall into the construction pit that was dug while he was gone. Ursula chides him for not being there when needed for the house repairs - or to defrost the refrigerator - or to listen to her complaints about her coworker - or - or... His bosses keep assigning tasks he isn't prepared to handle. By the end of the book, Pel is in university political muck up to his ears.

Mil Millington makes the reader feel for Pel Dalton. The poor man is clueless - and after the book is done he's in deep trouble not of his own making. Do you know the term "fall guy"????

Notice: Suggestive dialogue or situations