Where
Rainbows End was
published in 2004 (I know, I know, I’ve gone back ten years; but as the film’s
coming out this year I’m still feeling pretty relevant). It tells the story of
Rosie and Alex, best friends from childhood. It goes through their lives from
the age of seven to fifty, covering all the muddles, misunderstandings and
unexpected babies in-between
This is a book
about the intertwining lives of two people who somehow keep missing each other.
It is definitely my sort of love story. The five or so people fortunate (I use
the term loosely) enough to have read
lots of my writing may understand what I mean by that. I’m also in
general a big fan of novels that span a large period of time. Admittedly, Where Rainbows End lacks the historicism
that often appeals to me in books like that, being vaguely set in the late
twentieth to early twenty-first century, in a world where the internet existed
but mobile phones did not (which probably didn’t actually last for the forty
years it does in the novel). Still, I did enjoy watching the characters age.
In general I have
slight reservations about epistolary novels. Admittedly I haven’t all that read
many since I was a child, but I alwaus sort of feel they allow a bit of a cop
out, that writers are able to hide behind their character’s bad or mediocre
writing. I’m not sure this is absolutely true. For truly brilliant writers (as with Coulombeau, who I reviewed last week), good writing shines through the
characters’ voices and enhances them. Here, Ahern is able to get away with
fairly indistinct voices through the epistolary form. With the exception of
Alex’s misspelling of ‘know’ as ‘no’ (which began cute and became a bit
jarring), I didn’t think the character’s voices were that developed or
distinct. They spoke and wrote to each other normally, but it was always the
plot, and never once the writing, that I appreciated. It’s not that Where Rainbows End contains a lot of bad
writing so much as that there isn’t all that much actively good writing present. The story is strong, the style less so. The
novel lacks poetry, and when it does attempt to be poetic it comes across as
forced and ridiculous.
This is another
problem with the epistolary form. Take, for example, the letter Rosie writes
Alex describing Dublin in June. If it were not a letter from one friend to
another, this would be a strong section of description. However, as it is it
reads as simply silly. No one would ever write that to a friend. The only way Ahern
would be able to justify it would be if, say, Rosie was an aspiring writer and
sending work to Alex. As it stands, the description simply feels out of place.
Alex commenting on how ‘poetic’ her last letter was doesn’t change the fact
that the description is out of character.
Character is in
fact another issue I have with this book. Apart from Alex and Rosie – and Ruby,
who was perhaps my favourite character – I don’t really feel like you get to
know the other people in the novel. Again I think this again may be a side
effect of the epistolary form. Other than one or two of Rosie’s ‘notes to
self’, you never get to see properly inside anybody’s head. Several of the
minor characters, such as Philip and Stephanie, feel as if they were only there
to function as confident to Alex and Rosie respectively, so that we know what
they’re feeling. Meanwhile, the characters of Greg, Sally or Bethany also seem
to be plot devices more than humans. Katie and Toby seem primarily (although
not entirely, I’ll admit) to exist as a mirror of Rosie and Alex. None of these
characters feel like people; we never
see enough of them to understand them in any way. I wonder if this is often the
case with stories like this (I found a similar situation in Rowell’s Eleanor and Park), but
aside from Rosie and Alex themselves, the other characters feel undeveloped.
The exception here was Ruby, who I thought was fantastically drawn, and
consistently hilarious.
As it may so far
have somewhat escaped your notice, I do feel I ought to say that I did actually
really enjoy this novel. The plot is gripping, and I like watching the aging
and developing relationship between Rosie and Alex. It’s at times a frustrating
book, full of clever missed opportunities and misunderstandings – which, plot
wise, are impressive, because I imagine such things are relatively hard to
engineer in this world of internet and instant communication. And while the
ultimate mechanics and ending of the plot may be a little predictable, all the
twists and turns along the way are not.
You grow, over the
novel’s five-hundred or so pages and fifty or so years, to really care about
Alex and Rosie, which I always think is a good sign. The novel is also moving
at times and, if it doesn’t manage to capture a breadth of character, it does
manage to capture a breadth and depth of feeling within those characters it
does focus on.
Another thing. Where Rainbows End is funny. I mean, it’s not all light
humour, but there were several bits that just made me smile, and several more
bits that made me laugh aloud. Ruby, as I mentioned before, is very funny, and
at times so is Rosie. Their conversations are unfailingly enjoyable to amuse
me.
So, is this the
greatest novel ever written? Probably not. It’s cheesy, frustrating, and often
overdone. But it’s also lovely, moving and entertaining. And worth a read.
I’m also rather
excited for the film, rebranded as Love
Rosie, to come out next year:
Greatest
strength: The
plot, and Rosie and Alex themselves.
Greatest
weakness: I’m
inclined to say either the form, which I found a bit limiting, or the fact that
most of the minor characters were fairly undeveloped.
Let’s
finish on a quote:
Ruby: ...What's so good about being 20? I call them the materialist years. The
years we get distracted by all the bulls***. Then we cop on when we hit our 30s
and spend those years trying to make up for the 20s. But your 40s? Those years
are for enjoying it.
Rosie: Hmmm good
point. What are the 50s for?
Ruby: Fixing what
you f***ed up in your 40s.
Thank you Céline
for the recommendation!
Next
week: The Life of a Banana, by PP Wong
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