As Time Goes By

The Last Letter from your Lover - Jojo Moyes (Viking, 2011)


One of the reasons I feel blessed to be a reader is for the feeling you get when you come across a book that makes you so pleased to be reading it. It may be romantic, or exciting, or heartwarming, or tear-jerking. But whatever it is, you are glad that the book exists, and that you exist and are able to read it.


All of which is a rather over-the-top way to say that I really loved this book. I am all about the British romances, apparently.


Story, in brief: in October 1960, Jennifer Stirling wakes up in a hospital, her memory essentially gone. She tries to return to upper-class life with a husband she feels is a stranger ... and then finds a letter. She had been having an affair, and now much begin a mad search to determine the identity of her lover, the trajectory of their love, and what her husband and friends may have known. 


Interspersed are flashbacks just a few months, to when she met the man behind the letters, all from his point of view. How he found himself desperately in love with someone who should have been only a conquest. And then time moves forward.


And then time moves dramatically forward, to 2003. Ellie, a reporter whose own "all-consuming" love affair threatens to wreak havoc on her career, finds a cache of these letters. For reasons both professional and personal, she sets out to discover what became of Jennifer & B. 


The earlier story is the more compelling, and I wouldn't blame any reader who wanted to take Ellie and shake her for being just like any other British chick lit heroine. But that is unkind, and not entirely true. (And also kind of okay, b/c this reader loves [most] British chick lit.) And Moyes does two things that I adore. The first is making a romantic hero of the librarian. (Thank you!) The second is entwining the two stories such that the resolutions of each are entirely bound up in one another.


If I only read novels like this, I'd be pretty darn close to perfectly content.

My Best Friend's Wedding

Something Borrowed - Emily Giffin (St. Martin's Griffin, 2004)

I knew the book would be different from the movie. And I wanted to see the movie - um, hello John Krasinski! - and read the book. So: movie first. That way I wouldn't be disappointed by it.

It worked pretty well. Except I am sorry, but I still think Rachel is too good for Tom Cruise, or Dex or whatever. Maybe I just want to think that the right guy won't be so wishy washy about me. And the book and movie were surprisingly different. Even on major plot points. The book did things that just couldn't have worked on screen. I think we would have hated Rachel more. And maybe that's too bad, that we have to bow to convention, but so be it.

Rachel's "best friend" is bratty Darcy, whose fiancé is changing his allegiance. But her real best friend is co-worker Hillary. Although other childhood bud Ethan is pretty cool too. In the movie, rather than complicate things with another actress, we just wrap them both into Ethan (John Krasinski!) who has secret feelings of his own.

Anyway, totally enjoyable. I like that Rachel does something pretty horrendous - sleep with her best friend's man mere weeks before the wedding - and yet is portrayed as sympathetic and human. And while you root for her, you also do feel squeamish about what's going on. Except that you also don't. And you also - if you're me - can't decide if you think Dex is a cad or just a guy who misplayed his hand and is now figuring that out.

The sequel follows Darcy. And I bet we are going to learn to like this spoiled princess. But I sort of don't wanna. That said, I'll read the book. And watch the movie. After all: John Krasinski!