In
Landline by Rainbow Rowell Georgie McCool
is out to save her 15 years of marriage.
Her husband Neal travels to Omaha with their 2
daughters to celebrate 2013’s Christmas while Georgie stays behind for work in
Los Angeles….. magically (and due to some clever writing!) she makes the
connection via a landline from 2013 to 1998 when she and Neal were dating and
struggling to come to terms with what they each wanted from the
relationship.
Remember those emotions?
How everything seemed more vivid? And had more drama?
It’s easy to see (from the outside) that
Georgie needs to take some deep breaths and think about what is really
important to her – watching her go through that process can be painful at
times.
Readers who have been in longer-term
relationships will definitely appreciate this novel, but to me that means 20-somethings or
older – NOT the high school students who loved Rowell’s
Eleanor and Park
and
Fangirl.
Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchy is a
collection of short stories centered in a street in Dublin and many of them
focus on marriages, too. Binchy explores the life choices we make – the advice
that we often choose not to follow and the consequences of those decisions. This
is a book about love and loss which I would ration – picking it up for a story
now and again – in part to avoid the feeling of similar plots (although there
are plenty of unexpected twists) and in part to savor the last published
writing of a favorite author for 30 years beginning with reading
Light a
Penny Candle, and continuing through
Circle of Friends,
Scarlet
Feather and many more.
Possible read-alikes for Binchy: Jeffrey Archer, Rosamunde
Pilcher, Kate Morton, Lucinda Riley, Adriana Trigiani.
Check
Novelist
for others.
