I have a friend who is boy-crazy, even now. When she is obsessed with a man, she can go on for hours about him, dissecting every minor nuance of his behavior, every inflection of his words. It can be quite boring. However, I put up with it (for a while, anyway) because when she is not obsessing about a man, she applies that same relentless analysis to books, films, music, politics\u2014the interests that we share. Plus, she can be a lot of fun, coming up with bizarre and hilarious escapades.<\/p>\n
Similarly, the early stories in this collection put me off. There was way too much boyfriend angst: does he like me? will he call? should I call him? is it too soon to call him again? The fact that the narrator was usually middle-aged, if not older, added a fillip of interest, but no more than that. <\/p>\n
However, the stories where romance becomes secondary, such as the title story, are truly remarkable, full of precise description and insight into human behavior. I love these little windows into the motivations of others. For example, “A Very Nice Day” chronicles a Sunday-lunch party at the home of friends, Patrick and Oliver, and nails the relationship between them in a single sentence about Patrick having prepared the not-very-good luncheon because he does not like to admit that Oliver is the better cook. Immediately, Oliver became clear to me as well: patient, generous, forbearing.<\/p>\n
The stories I liked made me go back and look at the others I had dismissed. I found much that had lingered in my mind despite my impatient reading: images such as a living room being an archeological dig, compact descriptions of life in a particular time and place, the nuanced reactions of a reporter (described as “almost old but lively” \u2013 how precise is that?) when interviewing women in a shelter for victims of domestic violence.<\/p>\n
It is a shame that women are so often pushed to write romance, as if that is the only plot-line available to them. I have heard it in creative writing classes, always addressed to only the women in the class: I liked that story, but I would have liked to hear more about the husband. Doesn’t the main character have a boyfriend? It would be more interesting if the narrator had a love interest. You should include some steamy bedroom scenes.<\/p>\n
I think the marginalisation of romance is one reason I like mysteries. In the ones that I enjoy most, if there is any romance at all, it is secondary or even tertiary to the plot. Take Prime Suspect<\/em> for example. Even more than the crime-solving, I was fascinated by the way this series looked at a woman working in a male-dominated field. Jane Tennison’s relationships with her co-workers, bosses and subordinates, were picked apart and their nuances and subtle changes made visible.<\/p>\n Our lives are not just about romance, not even primarily about romance. We have many stories to tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have a friend who is boy-crazy, even now. When she is obsessed with a man, she can go on for hours about him, dissecting every minor nuance of his behavior, every inflection of his words. It can be quite boring. However, I put up with it (for a while, anyway) because when she is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}