Is it reasonable to be disappointed by the quality of a book
that thoroughly engaged you? Find
lacking something that you devoured in a single sitting? Can a book, which elicited a huge variety of
emotions from laughter to tears and many in between, leave one feeling a tad
let down? Confused as I am?
The source of my jumble of assorted views is Landline, the new book from one of my
favourite current writers Rainbow Rowell.
Best known for her Young Adult novels like Eleanor and Park and Fangirl,
Rowell also publishes books for adults, and Landline
is aimed squarely at this audience.
The books centres around Georgie McCool (what a name eh!) who is a
successful comedy writer in LA, and is
desperately struggling to balance her work with her family life.
Her husband Neal, a full-time house-husband, has been
feeling neglected by his wife, and the last straw is when that Georgie
announces that she has to work through Christmas on a brand-new show that will
better fulfil her artistically. Neal
departs with the kids to Omaha (for those of you unfamiliar with US geography,
that’s like really far away), leaving Georgie in California.
Distraught, Georgie goes to stay with her mother and, while
calling Neal on an old phone, finds that she is talking, not to the Neal of the
present, but the Neal 1998, in the early years of their relationship. The book then weaves a tapestry, interposing their
ongoing relationship development in the past, with its difficulties in the
present. This portal to the past is a really wonderful idea, and allows Rowell
to keep the story rooted in the familiar, rather than transforming it into
outright sci-fi/fantasy.
Along with this really clever plot device, this novel really
excels in portraying the challenging dynamics of modern marriage, but flipped
on its head. The dynamic of having the
woman as the working mother, with the husband at home is not unique to this
book, but it is handled extremely well here.
Georgie is not transformed into some masculine, career-centric
workaholic; she is simply a woman of great talent who has, with her husband,
elected to be the family breadwinner. Rowell
never questions this dynamic – that the man can raise the kids while the woman
works – the conflict instead stems from other roots.
Where this novel starts to unravel for me, however, is in
the characters. I love Georgie. She is well-developed and a real delight to
read, but the others… I know I am
supposed to sympathise with Neal, her husband, and that this is supposed to be
a two-sided story, but really I found him passive-aggressive and petty.
Then there is Seth.
He is Georgie’s partner at work and the object of much of Neal’s
jealousy, yet he is terribly underdeveloped to the extent that he appears to be
two one-dimensional characters welded together.
He is either, similar to Neal, a passive-aggressive jerk, or this sort
of non-entity. He doesn’t really seem to
influence the story; managing to have almost no chemistry with either the
narrative or any of the characters.
Having said all of that, I was hooked on this book. From the moment I began reading it I was
totally absorbed by Rowell’s writing and the skill with which she created the story’s
over-arching narrative. It made me cry
and go through minor emotional torment – and yet by the end I still felt
underwhelmed. It is a good read, but
it’s a disappointment in many ways, especially when one considers the strength
of her previous works, especially Eleanorand Park.
The central question of the books is: Is love enough? Can love sustain even when its participants
neglect? Well, love of Rowell was enough
to make me buy the book, and appreciation of the writing saw me to the end –
but it is not enough to make me give this book my unreserved approval.
7/10
Favourite Quotes
“Neal didn't take Georgie's breath away. Maybe the opposite. But that was okay--that was really good, actually, to be near someone who filled your lungs with air.”
“The future was going to happen, even if he wasn’t ready for it. Even if he was never ready for it. At least he could make sure he was with the right person. Wasn’t that the point of life? To find someone to share it with? And if you got that part right, how far wrong could you go? If you were standing next to the person you loved more than everything else, wasn’t everything else just scenery?”
“I love you more than I hate everything else.”
