All right, so, I’ve read a few other books by Rainbow Rowell; in particular:
Attachments, which I liked a lot – I like epistolary novels – and I think Rowell pulled off the difficult romance in this story, which was, essentially, “I fell in love with you because I got to know you while spying on you, can we possibly have a future?” So that’s a difficult situation.
Fangirl, which I loved very much. This is my favorite of Rowell’s so far.
Carry On, which is the fictional Harry Potter-adjacent fanfic the protagonist is writing in Fangirl, so it’s a neat meta concept as well as being a story that stands on its own. I doubt I would have read it except for its connection to Fangirl. I liked it a lot more than I expected, but I didn’t go on with the second or third books in that series.
I haven’t read the well-known Eleanor and Park, which I think might have been Rowell’s debut book, successful enough to kick her permanently up to semi-household-name status, meaning people who like contemporary YA have probably read at least some of her books. E&P might be on my TBR pile – I don’t actually remember whether I picked up the full book, a sample, or just have it vaguely on my radar. I haven’t read her Landline either, and in fact I’m not sure I knew about that one before I wrote this post.
But, for whatever reason, when I opened another story by Rowell, it wasn’t E&P, it was her newer one, Slow Dance. Which I note is just $1.99 at the time I’m writing this post (which was earlier this week, not ten minutes ago).
***
Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together … everybody but Shiloh and Cary. They were just friends. Best friends. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They promised each other than, no matter what, their friendship would never change. …
Now [Cary is a lieutenant commander in the Navy], Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.
When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there – and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?
The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.
***
Okay, so, this story definitely didn’t bump Fangirl from its place as my favorite book by Rainbow Rowell. I didn’t like it as much as any of her other books. I started reading it last year some time, drifted away from it, came back and read a bit more of it, drifted away again … and finally read the last quarter of it, maybe the final fifth, much faster and with a lot more enthusiasm, a few days ago. This is not generally the way I read novels. To be fair, it’s becoming more common. Even so, when I drift away from a novel, I don’t usually go back to it.
So, I read Fangirl fast, Carry On fast, Landline in basically one sitting. what is different about this story?
Well, first, it’s a braided novel. Past and present are braided together, and so are Shiloh and Cary’s points of view. I don’t object to this, theoretically. I’m fine with braided structures, including complicated braided structures, which this is. Rowell sets this up with a present-day meeting between Shiloh and Cary at this wedding, then does a flashback to high school, and then the structure becomes complicated because the flashbacks aren’t in chronological order, or I don’t think they are. Frankly, I lost track. This definitely isn’t a simple alternating present/past structure, because, for example, the first eight chapters are present-present-present-past-past-past-present-past, and so on.
I think the first fifteen or so chapters are from Shiloh’s pov and then we get the first Cary pov chapter, and I know for sure I lost interest for a while at that point. Switching pov is hard for me, especially if I didn’t expect it, and after that many chapters from Shiloh’s pov, I didn’t expect it here. It’s worse if the pov switch happens during a period of misunderstanding or regret or some other negative emotion is going on during and after the switch, which is also the case here.
Also, another thing, the chapters are very short. There are 84 chapters in 390 pages, which is an average of 4.8 pages per chapter. But this is an average. Some chapters are just a page long. (I don’t know why I’m seeing pages in ebooks now, either.)
Actually, I don’t even know that I’d call all these things “chapters.” A lot of them, maybe the majority, are actually vignettes. They don’t really have the structure of chapters, and maybe that’s because each vignette is suspended in time, as it were, because the story is being told so thoroughly out of order. In particular, most chapters set in the past are really vignettes, while most of the present-day chapters are really chapters (I think. I really did lose track).
So, there we are, with a complicated braided structure, consisting of short chapters and even shorter vignettes, shifting from the present day to various moments in the past. Which is a lot to handle, and I expect it gave Rowell absolute fits to put this together. It might be intellectually interesting to label the 84 chapters with time cues and two words about what’s going on in each chapter and see if it’s possible to figure out why Rowell settled on the final order of scenes she chose, but I’m not going to do that because it’s more trouble than I want to go to.
But the more important issue for me was, I really did not like Shiloh much as a person. Or rather, I didn’t like her much as a pov character; she’s all right as a person, I suppose. Young Shiloh got in her own way so much, which is frustrating, and Present-Day Shiloh kind of does too, which is also frustrating. I liked Cary better as a pov character, but he was secondary – we don’t get as many scenes from his pov. And he’s so into Shiloh. Which is fine, I guess. But he is nonverbal at the most irritating times. I don’t think I was entirely sold on this relationship because I just didn’t like Shiloh all that much, and I particularly didn’t like Young Shiloh. (She did improve.) (To be fair, so did Cary.)
Also, the heart of the problem was very much lack of communication. Plus being young and kind of idiotic, but mostly it’s lack of communication. This really is one of the stories where you want to shake the protagonists and shout, “Tell him what you’re thinking! Tell him what you’re feeling! And you – tell her what you’re thinking and feeling!”
***
I really should say here that I liked the latter quarter or fifth of the story a lot better. Present-Day Shiloh is an improvement on Young Shiloh, she and Cary finally have various important conversations, and honestly, they might not – probably would not – have been able to sort things out as well as kids as they can now that they’re in their thirties. It’s realistic for them to have these serious miscommunication problems when they’re eighteen. The way they’re shown at that age, it’s honestly hard to see how they could have gotten their lives in order at that point.
I will just note in passing that, from my current perspective, getting your life in order when you’re thirty-three doesn’t seem like it’s THAT slow, either.
But my point is, both protagonists are indeed more mature and that’s fine. They both have lives, and I did like seeing them work out their present-day problems, which have much less to do with lack of communication and a lot more to do with complicated family relationships, so that was far better.
There are some great moments in this story as Shiloh and Cary finally work things out. I like this a lot:
Shiloh led him downstairs. She’d been planning on not touching him in front of her children. But the landscape of her worries had shifted. She held his hand.
Cary has had a rough day, and I like this idea about Shiloh having a plan about how to handle this relationship in front of her children, but now the landscape of her worries has shifted. That’s a great line, and it’s also the right choice, a good decision from Shiloh, which is nice to see.
One of the funniest bits is when Cary puts on his dress whites to visit his mother in a nursing home type of place – his mom likes to see him in uniform – and then
When they got out of the car, Cary produced a very impressive hat. White, with a black brim and a big gold anchor. “You look like a cruise ship captain!”
“No, they look like me.”
I might have laughed out loud. Plus, the whole thing with Cary’s mother and complicated family, and Shiloh’s kids and her complicated family, this was all handled really well and I liked this part of the story a lot. Also the way Cary and Shiloh finally worked out their relationship and their lives.
So … I wound up liking this story. But it was astonishingly slow for me for an astonishingly long time. I would literally put it aside for a month or more at a time. And yes, I was doing stuff that slowed me down, but if a story is really catchy, I read it, and this wasn’t.
I should start a list of “novels I eventually finish,” because the list of novels that take me months to read but that I actually do finish is really short. I can think of just a few others offhand, such as Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolo series, where a horrible thing happened and I literally set the series aside for five years or so before going back to it and finishing it. At least I can say this wasn’t that bad.
But it doesn’t make me want to move Eleanor and Park or Landline up to the top of my TBR list, either.
Fangirl is really good, by the way. And Attachments. If you’ve read Carry On and the sequels, what do you all think of the other two Simon Snow books?
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Fangirl is one of my all time favorite reads. I feel for Rainbow Rowell: how do you top a book that good, or even write something that is in the same ballpark? I had a hard time with Slow Dance, because the character was so annoying, and I am pretty sure I just skimmed through the book and missed any good parts. I don’t really remember much about her other books, although I’ve read them. I reread Fangirl at least once a year. It might not be top ten, but it’s up there.
The Simon Snow sequels are ok but the first one is the best I think. Possibly less enjoyable if you have never read any fanfic ;)
I don’t think I’ll rush out to get the other Simon Snow books, then. Though I did like the first. But still.
I’ve read Fangirl three times and admired it more each time. That book sure does set a high bar.
I liked both Fangirl and the Simon Snow series. I also liked Attachments and Eleanor and Park. Happy to recommend Eleanor and Park if you need a recommendation. But Slow Dance is completely different from all of these books. I finished Slow Dance, even though I did indeed find it slow going. I’m glad I did, but I don’t think it will be a reread for me like some of her other books. Haven’t read Landline (that I recall), but now you’ve mentioned it, I’ll go look for it.
Braided structure and not very likeable character? I would not have gotten past the sample from amazon.
To be honest, part of it’s the type of story, right? The subject matter. I don’t read second chance mature/women’s lit romances for this reason. I might read a second chance NA romance *maybe*, if there was enough else going on to distract from that subplot. Even if you wrote this kind of book, I dunno that I’d read it… I’d consider it though. With Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl (and the fantasy trilogy) was the exception, in terms of what kind of book she writes, because it wasn’t about… a random silly girl/woman, i I guess? It was about a *nerdy* girl. That makes a difference.
Nerdy girls, besides being very relatable personally, also just don’t do the same kind of stupid things, don’t have exactly the same motivations. They share this with any kind of serious aspiring professional and especially specialized professional women (artists, scientists, architects, musicians, serious creatives or craftspeople or a career military woman). I’d also enjoy a women’s lit/coming of age romance about a female Navy aviator, for example, but that never happens outside thrillers/romantic suspense. And this influences what these kind of stories happen to mean. I know the fanfiction writing isn’t supposed to be equivalent to a career writer story, but the basic drives are very similar if not the same. Fangirl would be almost the same book if it’s about a young genre writer. I’d avoid books about young literary writers and their romantic entanglements since they have a well-known reputation for being insufferable.
Anyway, stories about random women tend to need either fascinating, intense relationships or a good plot to not be tedious. In the absence of a plot, you can pretend to replace it with complex book structure. This is simply a different flavor of tedious. Intense but ultimately healthy relationships (my preference) don’t really lend themselves to the second chance format, which is why I said I avoid them. Presumably, you can crash and burn because you’re young and then reconnect, but like I said, I’d reeeally prefer this reconnecting happened because of plot. Like, okay this is silly, but like in action movies the guy recruits former rivals or whatever, because he respects their expertise. This reconnection due to something outside romance or family life seems both more healthy and more interesting.
Also, second chance stories inevitably fixate on the past, and I really hate that/find it boring even without the inherent flow interruption of the braided structure. It takes a lot of skill to make the past seem both relevant and interesting, and that’s when it’s a preface. Your novella did it well, but it’s a rare case of where you can *immediately* tell why the past *and* the present matters, from the existing character context telling you (’cause you already know the character enough to care, which is a cheat in a sense). I’m generally not interested in the past of a character I don’t care about yet. In general, I enjoy the stories that only have the past in flashbacks when relevant, after you already have a context. The past-heavy stories have a hard road to stay interesting, and without a driving plot or known mystery to explain why I’m looking back… well, like I said, I avoid this whole genre ’cause boring is what I expect.
Reena, I very much prefer any protagonist in any genre to refrain from doing stupid things that get in their way and the way of everyone who is more competent. I just really dislike ineffectual protagonists.
I used to have a real problem with Romance because, in general, nothing whatsoever happens. As a rule, the more is going on aside from the romance, the better; for example, whoops, giant bats! But complicated, important family relationships can also work for me. The romance by itself is probably not going to be enough for me, although I definitely prefer an essentially healthy relationship and in fact another problem I had with Slow Dance was Cary’s obsessive focus on Shiloh, because I just don’t like that kind of obsessive focus. I feel that kind of relationship is more reasonable and suitable from a Golden Retriever, not another human being.
>Like, okay this is silly, but like in action movies the guy recruits former rivals or whatever, because he respects their expertise.
This doesn’t strike me as silly at all, this makes me want to write an enemies-to-friends or enemies-to-lovers story where someone is forced to recruit a former enemy to achieve something important.
> In the absence of a plot, you can pretend to replace it with complex book structure. This is simply a different flavor of tedious.
That’s really well said, and I wonder if that was part of the problem for me here. But it might have just been that I didn’t like Young Shiloh much at all.
>It takes a lot of skill to make the past seem both relevant and interesting, and that’s when it’s a preface. Your novella did it well, but it’s a rare case of where you can *immediately* tell why the past *and* the present matters, from the existing character context telling you.
I’m not actually sure which novella you’re thinking of? Nikoles? Or something else?
Rachel, if you do write and enemies to friends or lovers, can I try to weight the scales of your choices towards *friends*? There aren’t enough friendship stories. Although I know the characters tend to have their own ideas.
I also find characters with obsessive focus on another character difficult to enjoy reading about, unless the narrative never goes into the obsessive character’s head. From the outside the creepy/unhealthy aspect is much more bearable. Sometimes even completely opaque until a reveal.
I read the first Simon Snow novel, recall skimming at least part of it, and didn’t go on with the series.
Reena I don’t know if you’d like it or not, but years and years ago I read a second chance romance novel The Wood and the Trees by Mary Elgin, .. published 1967 apparently… which I liked a lot, and when I reread it, years later, it held up. An Amazon review compares the author to Mary Stewart, if that helps. It was the first second chance romance I read, which is part of why it had such a large impact, I think. I don’t recall the past having a lot of space on the page, except insofar as the woman was married with children when she first met the other guy, so she couldn’t go with him, not in WWII era Britain, even without with the other guy off on a probable suicide mission the following day.
Well, that’s pretty likely, Elaine, since I sure agree that there aren’t enough friendship stories. We’ll see!
I like the sound of The Wood and the Trees. Unfortunately, it’s evidently out of print and massively expensive.
Here’s a much less expensive copy from Biblio. They have one copy for $10, two for $46, one for $100. Interesting how huge the price difference is!
The Wood and the Trees sounds a little bit like Random Harvest, the movie with Ronald Coleman and Greer Garson- such a great movie! Agree, the book is too expensive for me to try. Maybe they will reissue it in ebook format.
It’s funny you mention ‘obsessive focus’ as unhealthy. I guess that’s why I added ‘intense but’. I would find romances boring if they weren’t… romantic. And so… not necessarily Romeo and Juliet level of melodrama (even without tragedy) but more.. a spicier Pride and Prejudice, maybe? I do like drama in the sense of, y’know, emotional conflict or basic differences rather than purely misunderstandings. I also like intense, passionate characters who have a purpose in life and/or a personality (haha) but also are capable of intense devotion. Not golden retriever type devotion. Maybe this is weird, but I mean Kirk and Spock type devotion. Does Spock have golden retriever energy? haha So yeah, if anything I like emotional restraint, but in conjunction with intense loyalty and the sort of vulnerability that only happens with that one person. I know you like that ’cause I’ve seen you write it! :)
I think in less skilled hands, devotion, loyalty and intense lasting intimacy feels like obsession. And also friendships, especially friendships between men, are ‘allowed’ a level of feeling that’s often derided as over the top or unhealthy in relationships in modern times. I think the lack of sex makes it more okay in people’s minds? I often think m/f relationships are written as (and are in reality) unequal in terms experience, emotional labor, etc, and this is another problem leading to obsession rather than devotion. The madonna/whore divide doesn’t influence a m/m friendship, but is a concern when the male character is focused on a woman. This is one reason I prefer genre romance with very powerful, kickass female characters. The woman is given equal strength in that world, even if the male protagonist is actually more powerful in some way.
Anyway, got sidetracked. I did mean Nikoles! I didn’t expect to enjoy that novella; in general, I’m not a fan of background/side novellas and tend to only read them judiciously, even in my favorite worlds. I’m even less likely to read one with an already dead character. :) Ironically, me not caring about Nikoles overmuch helped me read it without issue haha. This is mainly ’cause in general I’m not into side-characters (or character death). Anyway, like I said, I dunno if that was a fair test. You seem to have a talent for meaningful character death that nevertheless doesn’t bother me. I’ve had whole favorite series ruined with the ‘wrong death’, even if I agreed it was logical and it not happening would perhaps have been illogical. I’m just like that about former protagonists. I just can’t get past it.
The Wood and the Trees does seem interesting, and I do love Mary Stewart, whom I read at an impressionable age. From what I can tell, the thing that’s different about this book is, perhaps, a melancholy or elegiac quality due, at the very least, to the setting. Post-war settings certainly lend themselves to second chances in a natural way (this may even count as a plot driver).
I am generally not a big fan of second chance romances, I think because what separated the characters is so likely to strike me as, well, that was stupid. That may well be why postwar books seem like an exception: circumstances could easily separate people, and in the pre-internet era it would be much harder to find them again.
I can think of two exceptions. One is A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute. The characters didn’t have a romance the first time around, but they were separated by the war and understandable misconceptions. The other is a KJ Charles book, Gilded Cage, where the characters were young and made some mistakes the first time around but were mainly separated by malice on the part of another character leaving them plausibly believing untruths.
Well, yes, okay, I do very much appreciate intense loyalty plus emotional restraint. I think I draw the line when one character says, or thinks, “Nothing matters to me but you. I’m nothing without you. I’ll be utterly destroyed if you reject me.” I feel like saying, “Will you just get a grip?” To me, that seems to go beyond anything that could be healthy, or even reasonable.
Everyone is right about second-chance romances benefiting from a great reason for the separation. I prefer this reason not be “the malice of an enemy.” I hate malice. How very much prefer “the vagaries of chance during war.”