Rainbow Rowell is my hero.
I went through a few phases after hearing she was coming out with a new book. The first was “Already?” I hadn’t even read “Attachments” yet, so I knew I had some catching up to do.
The second phase was wariness. It didn’t get great reviews from the critics (what do they know anyway?), but that didn’t stop it from selling really well (the power of a strong fan base).
I knew it wasn’t a YA book. That it was about a marriage falling apart and that’s why I hesitated to read it. Her YA is so wonderful, I didn’t know if she could match that talent when writing about adults.
I should have had more faith. First of all, the aforementioned “Attachments” wasn’t a YA novel either (although an argument could be made for that, given the main character’s developmental limbo), and I still enjoyed it. It’s probably my least favorite of her novels, but that’s not saying much.
I was really hesitating to read this book because it sounded like a pretty major downer, but it’s not. Yes, the main character (Georgie) struggles through almost the entire book, but that’s OK. Struggles are why we read books and watch movies and TV shows. I won’t spoil it, but I will tell you that it all turns out right in the end.
The book takes a very interesting approach to exploring a failing marriage. It addresses what’s wrong with the relationship now and what was wrong with the relationship fifteen years ago when they almost broke up right before they got engaged. I know that sounds like a sketchy engagement, but it was actually super romantic.
Through some sort of mysterious magic, Georgie gets reacquainted with her husband (Neal) before he was her husband. When he was just her boyfriend. She remembers (and the reader gets to see) what brought them together in the first place. How their relationship grew and developed. How it went wrong is a little more fuzzy, but I think Rowell gives us enough information to fill in the gaps.
I only read a couple reviews of “Landline”, but I wonder if people looked down on it in part because it’s ultimately about a woman who has to choose between her career and her family. I know a lot of people have gotten sick of this theme, and I can totally understand why, but I haven’t. At least not when Rainbow Rowell is writing it (I’m not sure I could ever get sick of any story she has to tell). I completely empathize with Georgie.
A little personal background: I’m not married and never have been. Not even in a relationship. My parents have been stupid-happily married for almost forty years. My mom gave up her job as an attorney after she had my second brother. Plan A was to have two kids and go back to work, but life didn’t quite work out like that. Kid #3 came along and she didn’t want someone else raising her kids so she quit her job and stayed at home to raise us. She didn’t resent it (at least not most of the time). She always talked about it like a practical decision. Her family came first and it made more sense for her to quit her job than for my dad to quit his. Period. End of discussion.
In “Landline”, it’s the other way around. It made more sense for Neal to quit his job and stay home with the kids, so he does. Meanwhile Georgie is wrapped up in her career as a TV sitcom screenwriter, which often involves late nights fielding emails and rewriting entire episodes at the whim of the sitcom’s star.
Then she and Seth (her best friend/co-worker) get a shot at their dream job. Their show they have been working on together for almost twenty years has just been picked up. Now all they need is to present scripts for four complete episodes by December 27th. They have ten days. Ten days that Georgie was supposed to be in Omaha with her husband, two children, and her mother-in-law.
Who can’t sympathize with that? If I had been working toward something for twenty years, how easy would it be for me to say “no”? Not easy at all. I can’t say what I would actually do in that situation, but as a woman who has always (and I mean always) had dreams of being a writer, I can tell you it would be one of the hardest things in the world for me to say, “Sorry, but I can’t.”
She stays home to work on the scripts while her family goes off to Omaha without her. Her family (mother, sister, and father-in-law who’s only three years older than her) act as if her marriage is over. She acts as if nothing is wrong, but then it seems that’s kind of her MO.
Georgie honestly believes nothing is wrong until she tries to call Neal and he doesn’t pick up. She wonders if he’s screening his calls and deliberately avoiding her. The only time she can reach him is when she calls him from her mom’s landline, and then she can only reach the Neal from fifteen years ago.
A lot of reviews like to focus on the device of a landline that helps a woman communicate with her husband before he was her husband, but I don’t care about the device. It’s just a device. I care about what Rowell did with it. She uses it to take two moments in time in which this relationship was really in trouble and bring them together. In doing so she manages to save the relationship both times in just one week. I find that to be pretty impressive.
Georgie and Neal are two perfectly-built characters. I can see them, feel them, and hear them. They are both completely real, flawed, human beings. The side characters are somewhat less developed, but I’m OK with that, because the book isn’t about them. The book is about two people who found each other, lost each other, and rediscovered each other. Twice. And Rowell brings it all together perfectly. Complete with the movie-perfect shot of someone showing up unexpectedly on Christmas morning to save the relationship. Twice.