Well. What to say about this one? On the cover it says "one of the twentieth century's most gorgeously romantic fictions."
No.
It's about a young writer who falls in love with a beautiful woman. So far so good. She's a lying prostitute who's been visiting a mafia boss in prison. I'm not writing more because that would be giving spoilers and although I didn't really like it, the writing was good. Excellent even. But the story? It's written in the POV of the writer who doesn't have a name and the main character, Holly, is thoroughly unlikeable.
Seriously, though. This is so highly regarded because... what? What am I missing (apart from some lovely writing, that is.)
My version has 3 short stories in it too which are most excellent, especially the A Christmas Memory. That is well worth reading.
4 comments:
I have no idea why they call it romantic fiction! It really isn't. But if you read it as a novel instead, well I found it really quite engrossing.
Holly is an achingly beautiful young girl who has had simply an awful life. We don't know what it was like before she found her 'husband' but the implication was that it involved sexual abuse, and that's also seen in her behaviour and the issues she has.
Everything in life, as experienced by Holly, is a form of prostitution. For her there is no difference between giving herself for money, or friendship, or love.
But no matter what she gives, it is never her real inner self. All she ever shows to anyone is the shallow veneer. Possibly because that's all that is left really. Kind of like Phoebe in friends who can never think of anything really bad that has happened to her to write songs about - writing about having a bad hair day when she spent her childhood living on the streets, her mother (who wasn't actually) killing herself, her dad abandoning them, her step dad in prison etc.
It is also the double standards. No one ever talks about the writer in the story being a prostitute too, but he is. He has just one 'customer' but it is still the same thing, as much as it is for Holly.
He's not as damaged though, and begins to realise that for him there's a way out. There's never going to be a way out for Holly. Even if her South American hadn't abandoned her, it still wouldn't have been a happy ending. The only happy ending for Holly is to continue doing things that she hasn't done before.
Anyway, that's just what I felt when reading the book. It isn't what you get from the movie, that's very different.
I think that (given the cover of the book it seems quite likely) the blurb writers... ah, I've just noticed, it's a quote from the Daily Telegraph. Very bad.
Anyway, I wonder if whoever wrote that comment really actually read the book.
It was hugely interesting, this time round, knowing so much more about the world than I did when I first read it as a teenager, to see that Holly really was a product of her past and that the writer seemed to be some spoiled rich-boy (he didn't seem unduly affected by losing his job, for instance.
Ha ha you could only call it a romantic book if there were romance in it. And I don't think there was.
Plus the ending! I can only think the person who wrote the comment either only saw the movie or it was taken out of context - if you saw the full review it would make more sense.
I did enjoy the book though and have read it a couple of times now.
I think it will be at least another 20 years until I give it another go. Maybe I'll get it a bit more then.
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