You know the saying that happy families are all alike? I’m thinking there should be an addendum: Midlife crisis stories are inherently boring. Vague unease and ennui do not make for compelling drama.

Latest case in point: “The Slippery Year,” by Melanie Gideon. I so wanted to like the book, which got a write-up in today’s NYT in advance of its arrival next week, that I plowed my way through it waiting for the revelation or wisdom that would make reading it seem worthwhile. Sadly, it never came.

Gideon, no doubt a nice person if you know her, makes much too much ado about mundane domestic details and disappointments. Her husband buys a big motor home; she hates it. Her son needs a new Halloween costume; she’s a bad mother for talking him into trick-or-treating as wrongly incarcerated fallen angel. The dog dies. She and her husband can’t find a new bed they can both sleep upon. And so on.

Will this marriage last? Can she shake out of her funk? Do we really care? Gideon certainly isn’t interesting or insightful enough to make me care about her particular blues.