Serendipity
I am wary of books that are described as “heartwarming.” I likewise shy away from anything that has been labeled “meet cute.” But there are occasionally stories about fortuitous occurrences that actually are genuinely charming, and The Lost Ticket, by Freya Sampson, is one of those.
Libby arrives in London from Surrey and gets on the 88 bus on the way to her sister’s house feeling as if she no longer recognizes herself or her life. Her eight-year relationship, her job, and her home have just been jerked out from under her by her “bored” boyfriend, and it’s a sign of how bad things have gotten that she is choosing to go stay with the officious Rebecca in London. But the elderly man next to her on the bus won’t let her sit in miserable silence; Frank instead tells her the story of how he met a girl on this same bus, the 88, back in 1962, with hair just the same beautiful shade of red as Libby’s. They made a date to meet up at the National Gallery, but Frank lost the bus ticket on which the girl had written her telephone number, and never found her again. She made such an impression that for almost 60 years he has continued to ride the 88 line hoping to run into her; in addition to feeling like there was a spark between them, he wants to thank her for saying something to him that changed the entire trajectory of his life.
Libby, sad and at loose ends, is inspired to help Frank find the woman he has sought in vain. She teams up with others in Frank’s life to try everything from online searches to running advertisements and posting flyers, looking for #girlonthe88bus. But Frank has growing dementia, and his daughter wants to put him into a care facility, so time is running out.
The events that spread out from this simple encounter of strangers on a bus illustrate how serendipity can be a blessing in lives that had previously felt fixed and inevitable.
I immediately identified with the characters. I enjoyed the setting. I admired how the book discussed relevant social topics rather than just being “aw, how sweet.” I particularly liked the element of found family, that what we don’t get from our biological relatives can be had by embracing empathetic strangers and turning them into our people. There’s really not much more to note about this lovely book, except to say that it was a real pick-me-up when I needed one, and was not nearly as predictable as I thought it would be when I began reading.
Public, secret lives
I finally got around to reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Although she has written some other well-received books (Daisy Jones and The Six, Carrie Soto Is Back), this was the first of hers I have read. I’m always a bit skeptical about reading “popular” books, because I have been let down so many times by the promise created by all the hoopla, but I have to say that this one actually surpassed my expectations.
For those who have managed to avoid the book clubbers’ raves and have remained oblivious to this book, the basic outline is this: Evelyn Hugo is a Hollywood icon in her late 70s—retired, wealthy, and reclusive—who made it out of Hell’s Kitchen in the 1950s as a teenager and did whatever it took to become a Hollywood film star. Some of that meant entering into marriages for a variety of purposes that included true love, lust, ambition, politics, and money. Her relationships helped to shape both her career and her legend, but the men she married weren’t all of them the most important people to figure in her life—there is a story behind all the stories, and this is what Evelyn, now alone for many years, is ready to reveal while she still can.
She selects as her biographer a young journalist, Monique Grant, for reasons that are somewhat but not wholly connected to Monique’s writing abilities (and that’s another story) and gives her exclusive access. They spend days and nights together as Evelyn unpacks her entire glamorous and scandalous life—all the turning points, decisions, triumphs, and tragedies—until she finally reveals something that sets Monique back on her heels.
I’m not going to say much more about the story, because it’s one of those that you need to experience for yourself as you go along, rather than having it wrapped up in a couple of summarizing paragraphs. I will say that Jenkins’s writing style and the creation of the character and story of Evelyn are so evocative that you feel like you’re in the room with her as she tells it, as well as accompanying her to every movie set, red carpet, shop, motel, mansion, beach, or city street. It’s an enthralling look at Old Hollywood with its studio contracts and glitzy movie stars. The narrative creates a rich tapestry woven of ambition, betrayal, love, and a search for identity and authenticity. It’s full of historical detail and paints a colorful picture of the woman, her companions, and their backdrops.
My one caveat is that I would have liked to know just a little bit more about Monique Grant. Although we do get her basic story line, her character is so eclipsed by that of Evelyn that you tend to forget she’s in the room until Evelyn says “let’s stop there for today” and someone else’s hand reaches out to turn off the recording device.
Aside from that, I was captured and fascinated by this book and character from beginning to end, with no detail feeling extraneous. That’s a rarity, in my experience.
Busybodies
The Busybody Book Club is my first experience of the novels of Freya Sampson, and I think I will need to read at least one more just to verify what other reviewers on Goodreads had to say about them. Some loved this book, others said it was her least successful; if the latter is true, then I look forward to reading one/some of the others, because I found this a charming story with much to enjoy.
Nova Davies has recently moved to Cornwall to start a new life with her fiancé, Craig, and has found a job at the St. Tredock Community Center. She is attempting to revive a previously popular book club run by her predecessor, but so far it’s an uphill task. There are to date only five members including herself, and two of the five are distressingly silent, while the other two are all too outspoken. Arthur wants to read romances, because he is tasked at home with reading aloud to his wife, Esi, who has lost her sight and much of her mobility, and that’s what she likes. But Phyllis (accompanied by her smelly old bulldog, Craddock) insists that romances are rubbish and the club should focus on mystery, preferably the works of her favorite, Agatha Christie. She prefers Miss Marple (quietly brilliant) to Hercule Poirot (too pretentious), but is adamant about genre. Because they take turns suggesting each month’s read, however, opinions are also solicited from painfully shy teenager Ash, who is a science fiction fan, and from their new member, Michael, who is largely inarticulate and, of course, from Nina, who tries hard to keep selections eclectic and discussions moving despite Phyllis’s loud and frequent exclamations, interruptions, and wholesale scoffing.
On the night of their meeting, the only people left in the club are Nova and the four other members. At some point during the lively discussion of Where the Crawdads Sing, someone enters the center’s office and steals the petty cash box, which happens to contain ten thousand pounds allocated for a new roof. This isn’t discovered until the next morning, when the police are called by director Sandy to interview the book club members; everyone immediately focuses on the odd behavior of Michael, who received a text on his phone halfway through the meeting, looked distraught, and ran out of the room. He never returned to the meeting, and is instantly suspect; but Nova is also under scrutiny because it was her job to lock the office, thereby preventing the opportunity for the theft.
Losing that money is a disaster for the center and may actually precipitate its closing. The club members are immediately up in arms, Phyllis most of all, and are determined to figure out the puzzles of who could have stolen the money and for what purpose, and what has happened to the mysterious Michael. Theories abound, suspects are scrutinized, and meanwhile the relationships between the members change and grow based on their collaboration. Some things turn out exactly as you would expect while others are a total surprise, and the fun of the book is figuring out where you (and the characters) got it right.
This is a sort of hybrid; it’s a cozy mystery, but it’s also a story about people and their relationships with one another, their secrets, their memories, their hopes. And it’s a book about books, and who among us can resist that? I loved that the members ranged so widely in age, interests, and taste in books, and that there was “book chat” throughout. There are so many elements to this story—from coming of age to confidence issues to loneliness and grief—that kept the narrative lively and interesting. It’s not a “significant” book, but it is a well crafted and witty one that provided great entertainment and made me want to know what happens to the characters after. What more could you ask for, on a solitary rainy afternoon?
Memorable
I just finished Say You’ll Remember Me, by Abby Jimenez, and it seems that I am among the few who enjoyed it more than some of her other popular titles. I think I did because it was a simple story with mostly believable obstacles that came from real-world issues and not from elaborate mind games on the part of its protagonists.
The problem I frequently have with these contemporary relationship novels is that they require so much suspension of disbelief. Every trope comes with its moment where you think “Oh, c’mon, nobody would be that obtuse!” So often there are massive misunderstandings that keep couples apart, but the story relies on the reader accepting that, despite being in a relationship, these people never talk to one another, that they make blanket assumptions they don’t check out, then refuse to believe credible evidence, etc., and after a while I become impatient that I’m reading a book whose whole premise depends on two people not initiating one simple conversation.
This one was refreshingly different. It did have its flaws—but for the most part it felt believable to me.
Samantha has been living in Minnesota, having been drawn there for her work. She finds and decides to adopt a kitten, and takes it to a veterinarian who gives her advice she absolutely does not want to take. She is incensed by his attitude, which feels defeatist, and decides to prove him wrong, but when she actually pulls it off, she is surprised to discover that he readily admits he was mistaken and apologizes. Then Dr. Xavier Rush asks her out. Since his revised attitude comes along with Greek god-like good looks and a particular intensity that appeals to Sam, she decides to accept. They have one absolutely perfect date, and then everything blows up. Samantha had learned that her mother’s early-onset Alzheimers is advancing at a rapid rate and realized that she needs to be spending time with her and helping her family with her mom’s care, and she is scheduled to move back home to California the very next day.
That’s the real-world conflict that keeps them apart: geography and bad timing. They resolve to forget what might have been if they could have continued seeing one another…but neither Sam nor Xavier seems able to move past their undeniable connection.
The problem is, neither can change their circumstances to make a move. Xavier just opened his veterinary clinic a couple of years previous and is in debt for the start-up in an amount greater than he could get for selling it. And he can’t just hire someone to work there and run it in his absence, because he can’t afford to pay them—he’s been living on the leftovers after the loan payments are made, but no one else would do that. He’s stuck in Minnesota until circumstances change, but that could take a decade. And Samantha can’t and won’t shirk her responsibilities and cut her ties just to be with him.
But having a long-distance relationship with the burdens under which each of them is operating is nearly impossible, and although they give it a try, the thought that this situation might last for years is so daunting that neither of them is happy.
What happens when the person you have realized is “the one” for you can’t be in your life for more than a weekend every three months?
There were some features of the story that were less believable than others, and it does bog down in the middle when the angsty stuff becomes somewhat repetitive, but the attention to the details of Xavier’s back story, Samantha’s relationship with her family, and their undeniable chemistry when together keep it going. If you’re looking for a less formulaic relationship story, try this one.
Age and time
After 900+ pages of frustrating and confusing murder mystery, I needed a break from the serious, so I picked up two books in a row by Sophie Cousens, whose books are billed as romantic comedies. I don’t know that I would go that far, although there are comedic elements and/or moments. But I did find them enjoyable, one more than the other, although the one I liked second-best is apparently her most popular.
First I read Is She Really Going Out With Him?, mainly because I am a big fan of Joe Jackson. If you don’t get that reference, you are probably too young—Joe made his mark in the 1970s. But do go to Spotify and dial up his song by the same name—you might find a new favorite musician, who knows? If you like the song, then follow up by playing his album Night & Day.
Anyway…the premise of this one is engaging, although you sort of know what will happen at the end by pretty early on. Still, it’s amusing the way the story takes you there. It’s the tale of a divorcée with two children and not much interest in (or success with) renewing the dating game. Anna is a columnist for a popular but struggling arts magazine that has just been bought by a larger company, and she’s nervous that her job is on the line; the new publisher wants material that is more social media-attuned than her traditional approach—more personal, more anecdotal, more relateable. She is doubly alarmed when she gets the idea that her office rival, Will, may be trying to poach her column.
She ultimately has a contest of sorts with him, when he proposes to the publisher that they do a dual column. Anna decides that Will will write about going out with seven women he discovers on dating apps, while Anna will give up the details of the same number of dates with men chosen by her children. Since they are young and enthusiastic (seven and 12) and not particularly discriminating in their choices, her dating pool is a weird one, but Anna gamely holds up her end of the competition. But working together with Will presents more problems than just fending off his job takeover…
Yes, it’s pretty trope-y, and yes it’s been done before, but Cousens does have a gift for character development and for comedic moments that keep this one pretty fresh. And yeah, an author who references Joe Jackson…
The second book, The Good Part, reminded me of a few other books (in a good way), foremost being What Alice Forgot, by Liane Moriarty. In that book, Alice gets conked on the head and forgets about the past decade of her life, in which significant things happened (she had kids, she got divorced), which makes it awkward and sometimes comical when she keeps trying to relate to people the way she did in the moment to which she has been returned by amnesia. The Good Part is sort of the opposite of that, because Lucy Young doesn’t forget her past, precisely, she just anticipates her future so hard that she suddenly wakes up there one morning.
Lucy is 26, a downtrodden TV production assistant who is tired of fighting for the promotion that never comes, tired of living in a dump with three inconsiderate roommates and a ceiling that leaks on her bed every time the upstairs neighbor takes a bath, and one night when she takes shelter in a news agent’s during a downpour and discovers a curious wishing machine, she puts a coin in the slot and wishes hard to be past all this and into the “good part” of her life.
Next morning she awakens with a ring on her finger that the handsome man downstairs apparently put there, and a closet full of really expensive designer shoes. But she also has two children about whom she has no memory, a high-powered job she doesn’t know how to do, and a shockingly old (40-something) face confronting her in the bathroom mirror! She has apparently been transported ahead 16 years but retains only the memories of her life up to age 26, which in her mind was last night.
Not wanting to be diagnosed as mentally ill, she tries for a while to “fake it until she makes it,” but with variable success (especially with her older child, who thinks an alien has possessed his mummy). At first she firmly believes that the mysterious machine has transported her here, and that she will wake up the next day back in her grotty apartment, but when this doesn’t happen, she also has to confront the idea that she may simply have amnesia and has conjured a crazy reason for it.
The most interesting part of the book is Lucy’s inner debate about what she really wants. She has it all—but at the cost of missing the entire experience of getting there. Her husband remembers them falling in love, the birth of their children, her climb up the professional ladder, but inside Lucy is still that single girl who has never been able to afford nice things, doesn’t know if she wants to have kids, wonders if she should ditch her career for something different…and now that she is seemingly in the middle part of her life, she has to decide whether she will settle into the wonderful achievements and relationships she doesn’t remember establishing, or try to get back to her past so she can experience them all first-hand—or possibly make different decisions? This quandary is complicated by the fact that what she ends up doing (if she is able to figure out how) may impact not just the lives but the very existence of the husband and children staring at her with so many questions in their eyes…
These books were a great way to while away a few days. I might even read more Cousens the next time I get burned out on long, serious, and complicated.
Best or worst?
It is almost unprecedented that contemporary romance writer Emily Henry would have a rating under 4.0 on Goodreads for one of her books, but Great Big Beautiful Life is scoring a 3.99. It is even more rare for people to actually write “DNF” (did not finish) and discard one of her books before finishing it but, again, that has happened here. And yet, minus a few issues, it has been my favorite of her books to date.
Perhaps that is because I almost always want more than just the meet-cute, the enemies-to-lovers, the fake relationship, or whatever trope this genre’s authors employ while trying to make the rest of the story unique by the choice of professions for the protagonists or whatever other quirks they can throw in to make it distinctive. And this book has two story lines in it, each somewhat dependent on the other, that to me made it so much more interesting than the standard fare.
Alice Scott is a reliable writer of biographical stories and celebrity puff pieces for a reputable magazine. But she dreams of getting that big break that will take her to the next level and let her write more serious work, whether it’s articles or a book. Hayden Anderson just published his biography of a celebrity who struggled to capture his legacy as Alzheimer’s stole his memories, for which Hayden won a Pulitzer Prize. And now these two writers are in competition for a story that would be a huge score—the biography of Margaret Ives, the heir to a vast family fortune and an enduring social impact.
In her youth, Margaret lived a privileged existence as a frivolous and charismatic fixture of the society pages and the tabloids; but family tragedies and scandal drove her underground, and no one has heard from or about her in decades. Alice, however, fascinated by her for both personal and professional reasons, has tracked her down to a small island off the coast of Georgia, where she is living a secluded and anonymous life, and Alice has gone to see her, to pitch the idea of working with her to write her story. She has competition, however, that she didn’t count on, and is dismayed to discover that it’s a famous writer with a Pulitzer already under his belt. Margaret, both canny about the value of her story and also deeply distrustful of journalists (and people in general), offers them each an opportunity: Stay on the island for one month, meet with her regularly (and separately) to talk about her past and also to outline how each of them thinks her story should be told, and abide by her decision at the end of the month when she picks one of them with whom to move forward.
In addition to being in competition and not wanting to reveal their strategies to the other writer, Alice and Hayden are bound by airtight non-disclosure agreements they signed for Margaret, swearing not to talk to anyone about the contents of their meetings with her, including with one another. But it’s a small island with limited places to stay, eat, walk, and shop, and it’s inevitable they will run into each other; so they have to work out a relationship that is civil while avoiding all talk of why they are actually in this place. This proves challenging for several reasons. (Yeah, you see where this is going.)
The story switches back and forth between Margaret’s first-person reminiscences of growing up rich, famous, and beleaguered by notoriety, and the present-day thoughts and feelings of Alice and Hayden as they weather this month of testing by Margaret and their burgeoning feelings for one another. This is apparently what a lot of her fans didn’t like—both the jumping back and forth between past and present, and the intrusion of another person’s life story into the middle of their romance. But I found it an effective contrast and was caught up in both stories as they evolved.
In the contemporary story, we are much more involved with Alice, while Hayden remains a mystery. The story is primarily driven by Alice’s inner thoughts and by her encounters with and reflections on Hayden, which works with their personalities—Alice’s sunny and outgoing, and Hayden’s secretive and a bit dour. But ultimately we figure out what he’s thinking and feeling too, based on his actions and responses to her, and begin to hope that things might work out between them despite all the obstacles in their path. Picture, for instance, the feelings of a person in a relationship who loses out on a dream job to the person with whom they are involved. Also, they live in different places (Alice in Atlanta and Hayden in New York) and come from and pursue completely different lifestyles. But…there is a spark. More than a spark. So one way or another they have to figure it out.
There was only one thing that didn’t work for me about this story and, while it wouldn’t normally faze me, in this context I found it both inappropriate and awkward. It was all the sex. I wouldn’t normally believe I’d ever say something like that, but in this case I found it positively jarring in the way it distracted from the story. In fact, it was more than just a distraction—I felt like it flat-out didn’t work and shouldn’t have been there.
When Alice and Hayden figure out that they have feelings for one another, they make an agreement that it would be just too much, too weird, too tragic for them to get physically involved during their audition month with Margaret, because of what will happen at the end of that month. So they promise to “be harmless to one another,” and put off a physical relationship despite the attraction between them. That all makes sense. Then they (Alice in particular) do everything they can to test that resolve and flout every rule they make for themselves. I’m sure the author thought that making them irresistible to one another would be exciting, but for me it was offputting to see that they couldn’t stick to their resolve for a month, in the interests of not hurting the other person long-term. And the way that the physical relationship was portrayed was likewise distracting to the story, in that it “just happened” at strategic intervals, almost as if an editor looked over the manuscript and said to Emily Henry, “Oh, your readers won’t put up with no sex in a romance,” and Henry responded by writing calculatedly provocative scenes, and then counted off pages and dropped one in here and there almost out of the blue. It was so inorganic!
Don’t let my irritation with this stop you from reading this book; it’s interesting, and convoluted enough with its twists and big reveals to be a compelling story. But after you have finished it, see if your reaction was the same as mine, and let me know!
Yours Truly…except…
I wanted something a little more realistic after immersing myself in the sci-fi/fantasy of Discworld, but nothing too heavy. So I picked up Abby Jiminez’s most recent contemporary romance, Yours Truly. I am always torn when I read romance, because there is a tiny portion of my brain (heart?) that wishes things could go the way they do in these books, but a larger percentage that keeps saying “C’mon!” every few chapters.
There were things to like about this book. The male protagonist, Dr. Jacob Maddox, is almost too good to be true, except for one major thing that makes the story much more realistic: He suffers from nearly paralyzing anxiety (and, although it’s not named, possibly a little OCD as well). I liked the way the author incorporated this, because we don’t see much of these very common yet hidden conditions in this kind of fiction. The female protagonist, Dr. Briana Ortiz, is a quirky, interesting person with a hair-trigger temper and a great sense of humor who is currently dealing with some serious issues: divorce, a brother who needs a kidney transplant, work stress. Again, the sensitive and stark way the author dealt with the brother’s need for a new kidney and the likelihood he wouldn’t get one was a positive element. The way the author introduces the two characters and the initial misunderstandings followed by Jacob’s unusual solution to their hostility drew me in. (I love some epistolic fiction…)
Having acknowledged those elements, I now have to say that the book was not ultimately a success in my eyes for one reason: TOO. MANY. TROPES. Yes, I did all that capitalization and punctuation on purpose, because, as I noted earlier, “C’mon!”
We have:
• Workplace competition (rivals to lovers)
• Recovering from a breakup (both of them) so, rebound!
• Fake dating (pretending they’re in a relationship when they are not…or are they?)
• Uncomfortable (but suggestive) situations caused by the above
• Realization that they are soul mates
• Miscommunication that pollutes the relationship
• LACK of communication (bordering on the ridiculous) that rips them apart
The whole thing ultimately made me so tired.
I will admit that I really liked the characters, which is probably what carried me through the rest of the sturm und drang. And there were a couple of hilarious incidents that will make this book forever memorable. (In one case it’s killing me not to drop a spoiler here.) But the completely unnecessary angst that resulted from each of the characters being too cowardly to ask a simple question of the other for fear the answer wouldn’t be what they wanted to hear was not only implausible but became unbearable as the situation was drawn out for about 85 percent of the book. And the interminable inner monologues about said miscommunication made me want to bang their heads together (or mine against a wall).
I don’t quite know what to say; it was one of those books that you liked pretty well when you finished it, and then began to pick apart as you gained the perspective of days away plus other, better books as contrast. I won’t say don’t read it; but go in knowing that it is in some ways almost a parody of its genre.
The Wong way
Vera Wong rises to another occasion in Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On A Dead Man), by Jesse Q. Sutanto, the second (but hopefully not the last) in the saga of this intensely curious proprietor of a Chinatown tea shop in San Francisco. (The first was Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, reviewed here.)
Although the dead body didn’t land on the floor of her shop this time, he did, in some sense, seek her out. When Vera pays a visit to the police station to see Officer Selena Gray (the woman she hopes will marry her son, Tilly) about a problem of her own, she notices a troubled girl lurking outside the station, pacing back and forth and wringing her hands but unable to bring herself to enter. Vera knows, as a Chinese grandmother, that it is her duty to interrogate, er, offer a sympathetic ear until the young Millie gives up whatever is bothering her, so Vera takes her back to the shop for a sustaining cup of tea. Millie tells Vera that her best friend, Thomas, is missing…but Vera knows there’s a lot Millie is holding back.
That weekend, while cat-sitting at their apartment for Tilly and Selena, Vera discovers a treasure trove of information (she looks at the files in Selena’s briefcase) about a young man who has been fished dead out of Mission Bay, presumably a suicide, and although the man is listed as John Doe, it soon becomes clear that this is Millie’s missing friend. But as events progress, we learn that he had a public face as well, under a different name, as a prominent “influencer” on social media; four other people besides Millie who have possibly suspicious connections to the dead man convince Vera that this was murder, not suicide. Vera, bored since her last adventure as an amateur sleuth, jumps in with both feet to meet, interrogate, and adopt her new list of suspects into the chosen family she acquired the first time around. Despite Selena’s warnings to stay out of her investigation, Vera is determined to be one step ahead of everyone in figuring out this mystery, thus proving she is as intrepid at solving it as she was last time.
I think I liked this book even better than the first, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Vera has no filter, and her misunderstanding of American slang and her slyly manipulative cozening of people to get what she wants—which also usually corresponds to what they need from her—provides a lot of humor. It also lets us get acquainted with the cast of characters much more quickly as Vera grills them mercilessly in her quest to solve the murder. But although she can be a bit much, Vera makes up for it with her caring, which she exhibits in her preparation of vast quantities of food and tea for all and sundry. (Don’t read this when you’re hungry. You will immediately spend a fortune on DoorDash, and then be disappointed that it doesn’t measure up to the cuisine of Vera Wong.)
I was initially a little put off by yet another book with a prominent character who is an Instagram influencer, especially having recently read Sutanto’s previous book You Will Never Be Me, which was a much darker tale about two women obsessed with their online presence as “momfluencers.” But before I decided to put it down, I was drawn further into the story as each subsequent character revealed what they knew and a complicated back story emerged about the actual life of “Thomas” that led to his death.
I loved the moments in the story when each member of the motley crew that Vera assembles has the realization that…
“[L]ife gets much easier when you hand over the reins to Vera.”
Some on Goodreads said they didn’t like it that Sutanto took the story in that more serious direction, but I felt it was the perfect balance—a cozy with substance when it comes to societal issues such as family relationships, loneliness, generational differences and expectations, and also the fatal effects of greed and exploitation. It had a little bit of everything, but for me the Wong way was the right way, ha ha!
And, judging from the closing chapter, we may not have seen the last of Vera…and the next adventure could take in a much wider world than San Francisco’s Chinatown!
Perfect stone fruit
Halfway through my reading of The Mare, my checkout period at the library ran out, and I couldn’t get the e-book back on my Kindle for about a week, so I took a break and read something else. I think reading The Mare may have provoked a subconscious connection to this book, which is also a coming-of-age story with a narrator on the cusp between child and teenager, but at a time when a “teenager” wasn’t what it is today. It is a book I have read before, but not for about 30 years, so the story has its place in my memory but has softened and faded to the point where I could experience it fresh.
The Greengage Summer, written by Rumer Godden in 1958, is the story of a mother with five children who, at the end of her rope one summer, impulsively decides to pack them all up and take them to France—not as a reward, but to show them the battlefields and mass graveyards there in the hope that they will all become less obnoxious and selfish! There is a father, but he is a botanist who travels extensively for his work, leaving his family behind in Southstone, a provincial English village in which they live a thoroughly mundane existence under the watchful if stodgy eye of their Uncle William. They are not a well-to-do family; they wear uniforms to school and the rest of the time mostly hand-me-downs from their next eldest sibling, and their weekly pocket money is counted out in pence, not pounds. The children range widely in age: Joss is 16, Cecil 13, Hester 10, Willmouse (the only boy) is eight, and Vicky is five.
The family takes a long and exhausting train trip down to the Vallée de la Marne, in the Champagne district of France, their destination the Hôtel les Oeillets, a small pension in the countryside. But during the journey, the mother is bitten on the leg by a horsefly, and by the time they arrive she is so ill that she must be hospitalized with blood poisoning. The patronesse, Mademoiselle Zizi, is inclined to cut the children loose (despite their being unsupervised with nowhere to go), but Elliot, an English guest at the hotel, is prevailed upon by the mother to keep an eye on her family until she returns from hospital, so the five move in and start their holiday in France under his casual supervision.
None of them save Cecil speaks any French (Cecil had to learn endless French poems by heart as punishment for poor schoolwork, and it stuck with her), and all of them approach the holiday on their own terms. The book is narrated by Cecil, with insights provided both from her own observations and from the experiences of her siblings. Cecil is sitting squarely at that transition point between child and adult during this summer, while her sister Joss has suddenly crossed over to that place held by beautiful young girls in the first flush of their power as women. The others, known to the family as “the littles,” also go through some changes, as they all encounter their first introduction to an adult world in a different culture, untrammeled by the careful routines of their normal lives.
The name, The Greengage Summer, comes from the fruit orchard that is part of the grounds of the hotel, where greengage plums are ripening on the trees and plopping to the ground, begging to be consumed by the children who laze under their shade in the long afternoons by the river Marne. And like the fruit, the summer is filled for the children with flavor and sweetness that surrounds some hard stones or truths at the core.
There is more to the story—undercurrents, background information, and a mystery in which both the residents and the guests become caught up—but I don’t want to give away too much, because the book is a delight to read and I am happy to have rediscovered it, for myself and for those who read my reviews and might pick it up based on this introduction. In addition to story, there is a specific rhythm and artfulness in the way Godden tells a tale that makes me happily revisit most of her books, and this is one of my top five (out of the 60 she wrote). It’s also a great read to choose for the hot, languid month of August.
The characterizations of everyone involved—the children, the hotel employees, the guests—are wonderful, diverse and memorable, and the mood she creates of this leisurely sun-filled holiday fraught with dark undercurrents is engaging in the best way. It may be that switching over to this book halfway through my reading of The Mare is what gave me a certain dislike for and disappointment in that story, because The Greengage Summer has everything I love in a perfectly realized arc, right down to the last line of the novel.
HEA with soundtrack
At some point, for some reason, I put The Happy Ever After Playlist, by Abby Jiminez, on my library holds list, and it turned up about a week ago, so I read it. It was good timing, because I was in the mood for something involving but not taxing, if that makes sense.
The culmination is sorta promised to you in the title, but there is a lot (a LOT) of angst and drama between the first page and the last to keep you on your toes. One Goodreads reviewer described this as Justin Bieber fan fiction for adults, which is a little unkind but also somewhat accurate; but there is definitely more to it.
Some of the tropes were a little much: insta-love, co-dependency, traditional role-play, unnecessarily complicated situations provoked by hasty assumptions. But there were some winning characters and situations that retrieved it from cliché and, overall, I enjoyed the read.
The female protagonist, Sloan Monroe, is a painter, which caught my interest. She is also stuck firmly in the aftermath of losing her fiancé to a motorcycle accident almost two years ago, and has gradually let go of avocation, family, friends, and all but the most necessary of functions as she allows her grief to bury her in a trench of depression and inactivity. Only her best friend, Kristen, and Kristen’s husband, Josh, refuse to allow her to be solitary; they are constant in bringing over meals, binge-watching TV shows for an evening, and making a point to phone her every day to check in.
Then coincidence (or fate) takes a hand. Sloan is out doing errands when a stray dog runs into the road, forcing her to slam on her brakes, whereupon the dog climbs up her car and drops down through her sun roof. He’s chipped, so Sloan calls the phone number listed for his owner, Jason, but there is never any answer, and after more than a week, the voice mail is full. So although she never planned on having a dog, she decides, with this lack of response from his owner, to take Tucker on, and having him around reshapes her life into a more healthy profile. Now, she has to get out of bed, get dressed, and leave the house in order to walk the dog. This one change leads to others, and soon Sloan is feeling more like herself.
Jason finally gets in touch and wants his dog back, but Sloan is suspicious; why did it take him so long? Is he really a fit pet parent? This provokes a back-and-forth of texts and phone calls revealing that Jason took a break to go walkabout in Australia for two weeks, leaving his dog with someone who turned out to be untrustworthy. As they keep calling and texting, they both realize there is something between them, some spark, and look forward to meeting. But Jason, a musician on the rise, is on the cusp of a big shift in his career, and Sloan doesn’t know whether she will be able to come second to such an all-consuming lifestyle.
I thoroughly enjoyed both this set-up and the early days of the relationship, but there were parts of the book where I wanted to lecture (or slap) one or the other of them for making things so much more difficult than they had to be. Also, the insta-love was exceedingly insta (one week in, they can’t live without each other?), and the misunderstandings between them seemed avoidable if only they would sit down for 15 minutes and have a good heart-to-heart. And finally, the dog, Tucker, needed to be more prominent throughout!
Still, it kept my attention and proved as entertaining and non-taxing as I had wished. I also really liked the musical playlist that Jiminez incorporated as chapter headings, which, if you listen to the songs as you go, enhance the mood of the book. A fun conceit.
(There is a prequel, called The Friend Zone, which is the story of Kristen and Josh.)
The Book Adept 