Attachments

By -
The much nicer UK cover
Attachments, by Rainbow Rowell

I read a review of this by Hanna at Booking in Heels the other day and thought it sounded interesting, so I put it on hold at the library.  And I did enjoy it quite a bit--it's a fun, cute read (not too cute), and a romance, but not sloshy or overly steamy.  About the level of romance that I like, in fact.

The premise is a tricky one.  It's 1999, and Lincoln gets a job at a newspaper that is finally letting all employees have email and Internet access.  It's Lincoln's job to monitor the emails and enforce rules about off-color jokes, gambling, and too much personal email.  Meanwhile, the other half of the novel is epistolary;  Jennifer and Beth are employees who email each other a lot with everyday chat about their lives, and it gets flagged for checking.  As Lincoln reviews their correspondence, he develops a crush on one of the women.  He knows perfectly well that it is creepy to read the email of someone you have a crush on, but how to stop when it's kind of his job, and he doesn't want to?

The completely skeevy premise works!  For one thing, a novel is not real life (pro tip: don't do this IRL).  Even more, Rowell does a great job giving us a character who is a truly good person and conflicted about what he's doing.  You can't not love Lincoln, and the same goes for the girl he falls for before he ever sees her.

What Lincoln really reminds me of is that show that was on for a while--Chuck.  If you didn't see it, Chuck is this really nice, smart, good guy whose life was derailed in college, and it takes him years to really get himself back together, but you root for him the whole time because he's just such a good person. 

I really enjoyed it.  A sweet, not-too-fluffy novel that I couldn't put down, and a nice break.

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 7, 2013 at 3:06 PM

    I just couldn't get past the skeevy premise! It skeeved me out the whole time and I couldn't deal with it. I so much couldn't deal with it that I invented the term "premise denial" to describe that thing that happens where you can't accept the most basic level of a book's premise, and thus it is impossible that you will be able to have a reasonable opinion about that book at all.

    (That was a long sentence.)

    BUT I am still excited about Rainbow Rowell and feel very sure I will love Eleanor and Park.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanNovember 8, 2013 at 9:01 AM

    I can totally understand that it would skeeve you out too much! I still can't believe she pulled it off, and that anybody would write this premise at all.

    I'm going to try Eleanor and Park. Looking forward to it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more