The Life Coach by Philippa Swan

From the compilation arising from this year's New Zealand Book Month, this short story compares two women's lives and aspirations. Becky is the uber-balanced, successful suburban mum whose husband just happens to have recently moved into the sleepout. Erica never made it home after her OE, keeps bees and works for the NHS in Britain. Despite their differences the two are good friends, although Becky is convinced that Erica is wasting her life by not choosing the family path like Becky has done.

In true liberated-woman style, Becky decides to deal with her husband's absence by enrolling in an online course to train as a life coach. However, as she devotes ever more energy to her studies, the rest of her life progressively deteriorates. Erica patiently submits to being Becky's case study, but is more concerned about her missing bees. She wonders about returning to New Zealand but has a horror of falling into Becky's suburban lifestyle. When the life coach course turns out to be a scam set up by a pervert seeking vulnerable women, Becky turns back to her husband for support and Erica is free of her friend's meddling once again.

While the story seems rather superficial, it's nonetheless highly enjoyable. Swan makes easy use of familiar images - the suburbs, the writer's garret, the OE - to keep the story tight. Her snappy prose does a great job of ridiculing the positive-affirmation hype surrounding life coaching, best of all in the following exchange:

"I'm quite content with my life, and that's quite radical in a world geared to selling stuff to make me happier. Maybe the most elusive thing in the world is contentment."
"Contentment?" Becky sounds worried. "We haven't covered that yet."
"I doubt it's in the syllabus."

As a quick, lighthearted look at modern life, this story excels, but it leaves me craving depth of emotion.