Ali has been married to Ed for years and she’s always thought she was happy. But when handsome young artist Christian falls in love with her, she’s more than a little bit flattered. Christian is nearly young enough to be her son yet he makes her feel beautiful and loved.
When Ed finds out, he’s just a little bit miffed and kicks Ali out - although one benefit of the new arrangement is that at least he doesn’t have to be quite so embarrassed about his own feelings for his scary workmate Orla. And come to think about it, his youngest son Elliott’s nursery school teacher Nicola is kind of hot too.
Meanwhile Ali sets up home with Christian and his young housemates Robbie and Rebecca, who happens to be Christian’s ex-girlfriend. Christian is kind and sweet and attentive and although he is just a big kid, he does make Ali feel very happy. In addition, Ed’s brother Neil is trying and failing to chat up Ali’s sister Jemma, even though she prefers married men.
In many ways, this book was great. I love the idea of a thirty-eight year old mother of three sharing a house with her toy boy and his mates. I also love how all the single woman around seem to be throwing themselves at Ed now he’s newly single. It was also quite hilarious the way Neil and Jemma clearly liked each other a lot but keep fucking things up.
But I wanted to see more. I wanted to see more of Ali trying her best to get on with Robbie and Rebecca, two people who are completely unlike her, rather than just telling us that Robbie was okay and Rebecca was a bitch. I actually thought Rebecca was mostly amazingly nice to her under the circumstances. How would you feel if you were woken up in the middle of the night by the girlfriend of the man you love needing a place to stay? I think it says a lot for Rebecca that she didn’t kick her out onto the street there and then.
It’s an amazing and original situation with the potential to be really hilarious, as well as giving some very different people the chance to get to know and learn to appreciate each other. But there just wasn’t enough of the parts of the book that interested me most. The book does have some absolutely hilarious moments but I couldn’t help feeling that Carole Matthews missed an opportunity here.
Then towards the end, something really major and shocking and life-changing happens and in a way it spoiled the book. First of all, this book is a comedy – it has some underlying serious messages in it but on the surface, it’s a very funny comedy. So to bring this big event in near the end seemed really inappropriate and strange when you’ve spent five-sixths of the book laughing.
Secondly, this big event is key in helping the characters to decide what they want from life. This is fine and realistic. But I kind of feel the end of the book should be about the characters’ working out what they really want and although it’s not unrealistic that it should take something really major to help them decide this, it does in a way make everything else in the book irrelevant. This big event means it doesn’t matter what they’ve learned about themselves and other people. All that matters in the end is who copes best in a crisis. And I don’t see what that’s got to do with deciding whom you really love. There’s no way I’m dumping my boyfriend for someone competent.
Even if I agree with how things stand at the end of this book (which to be honest I’m not completely sure I do), I’m sure there must have been a way of working things out that was more convincing, more satisfying and more in keeping with the tone of the rest of the book. And if Matthews wanted something big and dramatic, maybe she could have made the story into a serious story instead of a comedy. It was like something terrible was happening and I was still waiting for the punchline.
Not many of the characters were likeable but I did find them interesting. Ali seemed a bit moany and obsessive and embarrassing but I genuinely wanted things to work out for her and I was interested in how she was going to make changes in her life. Matthews’ writing ensured that even though she was unfaithful pretty much from the start, she wasn’t the villain of the piece. She was just feeling lonely and unloved and then she met someone who made sure she didn’t feel that way anymore.
Ed was even worse. I really feel for the poor kids. He seemed desperate to prove his masculinity and the way he treats Orla and Nicola (and Ali) just isn’t very nice. It doesn’t matter how forceful and determined to get into his pants Orla and Nicola are (in very different ways), it’s still not very nice of him to shag both of them. At least Ali waited until Ed had thrown her out before jumping into bed (or rather into the bath) with Christian. But it was interesting watching Ed trying to work out which one he liked best. It seemed like he changed his mind all the time. Maybe Matthews had to write him this way in order to ensure that Ali didn’t look bad but it was hard to sympathise with him much – although he was certainly very amusing.
Christian was just adorable. He’s sweet and well-meaning but a bit useless. He does do some awful things (really quite seriously awful, not to mention illegal) and he does seem scarily immature for a twenty-three year old, even by my standards. He seems more like a sixteen year old, maybe even younger, who wants to be a grown-up and in some ways has a more grown-up outlook than most people his age but stick him in the grown-up world and he doesn’t have a clue. But his feelings for Ali seem warm, genuine and romantic. He tries really hard to make her happy. It’s just at the same time he’s trying equally hard to make himself happy.
But my favourite character, Sharon, was hardly in it. She was the tart Christian met at the nightclub on the same night that Ali was thrown out by Ed. Sharon is just so amazingly nice and caring. She just wants something to eat and it isn’t even her house but she can tell Ali’s upset so she asks if she’s okay and offers to make her a cup of tea. Even when she realises Ali is essentially her rival for Christian’s affections, Sharon is still really nice to her. And why shouldn’t she be? Nice people come in all shapes and sizes, including as little slags. The other characters in this book could learn a lot from her. And so could I.
It’s funny how little things can annoy you in a book – and often it’s not the writer’s fault at all. At one point, Matthews referred to ‘a turn of turtles’ and I got really excited because I happen to know the collective noun for turtles is a bale of turtles. But I looked it up on Google just in case and unfortunately turn and bale are both correct. So instead of showing off how clever I am for knowing the real collective noun for turtles, I instead look ignorant for only knowing one of the terms. And that’s even more annoying than someone getting it wrong.
Monday 29 November 2010
Thursday 4 November 2010
Birthday Girls (Annabel Giles)****
So I've failed slightly at posting every Sunday without fail...
This is a very cleverly-written and interesting book with a most unfortunate opening sentence which even more unfortunately comes true. In detail. Let’s put it this way, if I’d read the opening sentence in the shop, I would not have bought it. Emetophobes beware.
Birthday Girls follows the story of six women on their birthdays, ranging from ten-year-old Scarlett to Constance, who is sixty. They don’t all have their birthday on the same day but it follows the six woman over the course of just over a year so Scarlett is eleven by the end of the book. Four of them are in one family, the other two are from a different family but one of the male characters is sleeping with a woman from each family so they’re all kind of related in ways they discover as the book progresses. They also have various acquaintances in common – it’s quite fun when various minor characters start popping up in different places.
The book is divided up into sections with each section taking place on a particular person’s birthday. Most of each section is told from the point of view of the birthday girl although by the time you get to the final section, which tells you about Constance’s birthday, the POV jumps about a bit more as all the stories gradually resolve themselves.
It’s a really interesting way of telling a story and it’s also one that works perfectly well for the story – or stories – Annabel Giles tells. I don’t know if the idea for the plot or the narrative structure came first – often when the narrative structure is the first idea, it can be difficult finding a story to fit it and when the plot comes first, it can be equally difficult to shoehorn it all into something with such a rigid structure. But the two fit really well together.
I also like the characters. They’re all so completely different and in some ways they live in different worlds but the connections between the characters are still convincing. Scarlett can be a bit annoying (she’s a bit young and cute) but I really liked the other characters. Some people might find Sophie a bit weak, wet and embarrassing, Della certainly has her bitchy side, Constance seems a bit mad and Millicent, until you know the full story, can seem very stupid, desperate and a bit of a doormat, in a snobby sort of way (if you can imagine such a thing). As for Jessica, she is a bit of a sad wannabe and no-one in the book seems to like her.
But I really liked all of them. Even Scarlett isn’t that bad. Sophie is sweet and loving, and very brave in her way. Della’s determined independence is both admirable and moving because you can tell she’s hurting under the surface. Constance is quite mad but delightfully intrepid and with-it. Millicent is an amazing woman, with great strength, intelligence, courage and patience. And I had a lot of sympathy for Jessica, who finally has to accept she’s not a big star who’s loved by millions. It’s a very sad story and I always felt she was more a victim of circumstances than actually being a horrible person. It’s like being a star was all she knew how to do.
There are problems with the book. Sometimes the birthdays can end on a bit of a cliffhanger and you might never find out what happened next because the story has jumped forward a few months and while the event was hugely important at the time, it has paled into insignificance by then. Also the big final twist at the end was something I saw coming a mile off. I think if I’d worked it out very near the end, it might have had more impact but as it was, I had enough time to come to the conclusion that it was far too coincidental that things worked out as they did and it was a bit of a soap-opera moment and the book might have been stronger without it.
I did enjoy it though.
This is a very cleverly-written and interesting book with a most unfortunate opening sentence which even more unfortunately comes true. In detail. Let’s put it this way, if I’d read the opening sentence in the shop, I would not have bought it. Emetophobes beware.
Birthday Girls follows the story of six women on their birthdays, ranging from ten-year-old Scarlett to Constance, who is sixty. They don’t all have their birthday on the same day but it follows the six woman over the course of just over a year so Scarlett is eleven by the end of the book. Four of them are in one family, the other two are from a different family but one of the male characters is sleeping with a woman from each family so they’re all kind of related in ways they discover as the book progresses. They also have various acquaintances in common – it’s quite fun when various minor characters start popping up in different places.
The book is divided up into sections with each section taking place on a particular person’s birthday. Most of each section is told from the point of view of the birthday girl although by the time you get to the final section, which tells you about Constance’s birthday, the POV jumps about a bit more as all the stories gradually resolve themselves.
It’s a really interesting way of telling a story and it’s also one that works perfectly well for the story – or stories – Annabel Giles tells. I don’t know if the idea for the plot or the narrative structure came first – often when the narrative structure is the first idea, it can be difficult finding a story to fit it and when the plot comes first, it can be equally difficult to shoehorn it all into something with such a rigid structure. But the two fit really well together.
I also like the characters. They’re all so completely different and in some ways they live in different worlds but the connections between the characters are still convincing. Scarlett can be a bit annoying (she’s a bit young and cute) but I really liked the other characters. Some people might find Sophie a bit weak, wet and embarrassing, Della certainly has her bitchy side, Constance seems a bit mad and Millicent, until you know the full story, can seem very stupid, desperate and a bit of a doormat, in a snobby sort of way (if you can imagine such a thing). As for Jessica, she is a bit of a sad wannabe and no-one in the book seems to like her.
But I really liked all of them. Even Scarlett isn’t that bad. Sophie is sweet and loving, and very brave in her way. Della’s determined independence is both admirable and moving because you can tell she’s hurting under the surface. Constance is quite mad but delightfully intrepid and with-it. Millicent is an amazing woman, with great strength, intelligence, courage and patience. And I had a lot of sympathy for Jessica, who finally has to accept she’s not a big star who’s loved by millions. It’s a very sad story and I always felt she was more a victim of circumstances than actually being a horrible person. It’s like being a star was all she knew how to do.
There are problems with the book. Sometimes the birthdays can end on a bit of a cliffhanger and you might never find out what happened next because the story has jumped forward a few months and while the event was hugely important at the time, it has paled into insignificance by then. Also the big final twist at the end was something I saw coming a mile off. I think if I’d worked it out very near the end, it might have had more impact but as it was, I had enough time to come to the conclusion that it was far too coincidental that things worked out as they did and it was a bit of a soap-opera moment and the book might have been stronger without it.
I did enjoy it though.
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