Getting Rid of Matthew (Jane Fallon)***

It’s the old love triangle situation. Helen is sleeping with Matthew who is married to Sophie. Helen begs Matthew to leave Sophie, but he won’t. But then he does leave her, and Helen realises that, actually, she’d have preferred it if Matthew had stayed where he was.

It’s not the greatest book in the world, but it’s very funny. Probably a laugh on every page, although there are certainly jokes that don’t quite work, such as the confusion caused by Sophie’s nickname for her stepson – a nickname that completely disappears from use once the case of mistaken identity is resolved. But most of the humour is great. Helen is not as stupid as most heroines - the ridiculous situations she finds herself in are not so much down to stupidity as to bad luck and a lamentable but nevertheless perfectly natural curiosity about the Other Woman. But then, most people would seem intelligent next to Matthew.

Jane Fallon doesn’t give many of her characters a great deal of depth, but this is probably because Helen and Matthew are shallow and selfish people. Both of them behave incredibly badly, and it doesn’t help that the wronged Sophie is far nicer than either of them, with considerably more depth and kindness than both of them put together.

Matthew is irritating, clingy, and a total baby who cries too much - and I usually think it’s cute when guys cry. His inability to stay faithful to Sophie must also be mentioned, although, it has to be said, he does seem to stay faithful to Helen once he’s moved in with her. But what he really needs is a mother, not a wife or girlfriend.

Helen behaves in a way that probably amounts to stalking Sophie (this happens after Matthew has left her), and spends the whole of their resulting friendship telling lies. Helen keeps a list of people she hates which is scarily long, and some of her reasons for disliking people are irrational. But it’s difficult not to feel sympathy for Helen when her best friend Rachel is too busy having sex to make time for her. No wonder Helen gets in such a mess when the only person being friendly to her (apart from the embarrassingly affectionate ‘Helen from Accounts’) is Sophie.

So, in making these very ordinary and rather shallow people so amusing and even, eventually, likeable, Fallon’s novel is really quite clever. Helen and Matthew are far from perfect, and Fallon makes this very clear, but you do end up liking them for it - Helen because she does at least seem prepared to learn from all her mistakes; Matthew because he probably would learn from them if only he had the maturity. (Matthew seems to be the standard name for immature men in chick lit: see also The Birds and the Bees when I post that review.)

Sophie isn’t perfect either, but she comes very close in the circumstances. I love her even though she's involved in the book’s two least-amusing moments, not one but two v-scenes. (Chick litty Sophies, in case you were wondering, are absolutely lovely, if you can overlook a tendency to throw tantrums in public places.) Fallon’s Sophie is intelligent, although her overly (but endearingly) trusting nature does mean she fails to notice that her new best friend ‘Eleanor’ is actually the woman her husband ran off with.

So the novel is very amusing, cleverer than it seems at first, and very enjoyable. It also ended in the way I was hoping it would. But if you want a meaty, satisfying read with strong characterisation and a main character who isn’t in with a chance of being arrested for stalking, this probably isn’t the book for you. If you don’t want those things, which a lot of people don’t, it’s perfect.