BEACH READ (2020)
By Emily Henry
Penguin Publishing Group, 374 pages.
★
You’d think I would know better by now. Back in the late 1980s, the academic world went gaga over Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance. Radway insisted there is a complex relationship between romance novel readers, content, and publishers. She’s probably right, but the suggestion that such works are serious literature felt implausible. But what did I know? I’m male and didn’t read that stuff. In an effort to stretch myself, every few years or so I’d plough through a buzzy work from the best-seller list. The lessons didn’t take, but I nonetheless decided to give the genre one last old college try. Emily Henry is the latest to vie for the queen of romance novels crown and has a new best-seller, so I picked up her last book, which sold roughly 3.5 trillion copies from what I infer from the hype.
I owe Henry a debt. After reading the waste of perfectly good trees titled Beach Read, I will never again have to pretend that romance novels are literature. Here’s the skinny. January Andrews is a Brooklyn-based romance writer. (How original!) After her father dies, she finds that he had a lover when January’s mother was battling cancer. He kept her at a beach house at North Bear Shores on Lake Michigan, which January has inherited, though she plans to offload it ASAP. She nonetheless goes there to pound out her new book, Pride and Prejudice–sorry, I made up that title–and sells stuff from the house to raise needed cash; her French boyfriend has recently dumped her and she’s in-between residences. We never meet Jacques, but he’s easily the most intelligent character in the book for having the sense to float away on the airstream released from January’s vacuous head.
Poor January. Though her mom survived, she’s mad at her late father, her annoying cheerleader agent, her best friend’s decision to move to Chicago, and her next-door neighbor Gus Everett, a guy she sort of knew when they were both at the University of Michigan. He was arrogant then, is now a celebrated non-fiction writer, and has added cynicism to his repertoire. Whew. Got it? Oh, did I forget to mention that her lesbian aunt “Pete” is her only real contact in North Bear Shores and that her father’s mistress lives in the area? Or that she gets roped into a book discussion at a local bookstore? (Would such a tiny place even have a bookstore?) Guess who else is also drafted to show up for what turns out to be the discussion group from Dante’s 8th layer of blue-haired hell?
Gus seems to think romance novels are garbage, so we initially like him, and he is outwardly disdainful of January, another potential point in his favor. The only thing they have in common is that both are suffering from writer’s block. They hit upon what might be charitably called a unique way to get unblocked. Gus agrees that he will try to write a romance novel and January will try her hand at non-fiction. This plan entails January taking Gus to places the exude romantic ambience, while he takes her to the remains of a commune-turned-death cult. And, of course, they will fall in love, because there’s nothing like a horrible tragedy to get the old love juices flowing. As it transpires, Gus isn’t cynical; he’s damaged from his failing marriage and just never had it in him to tell January that he’s always been intimidated by her talent. (Now we hate Gus.) What other schmaltz can we dump into this soup? How about a stash of letters from January’s father, revelations from the mistress, a boat, a visit from January’s best friend, and an offer from Gus’s soon-to-be ex-wife to try to resurrect their relationship? If that’s not enough for you, how about references to the Bing Crosby song “It’s June in January/Because I'm in love?" Will there be a happy ending? Well, duh!
Beach Read invites adjectival outbursts. Here are several that occurred to me: insipid, trashy, overwrought, obvious. Is Emily Henry playing with the romance genre? Hmmm… a romance involving a romance writer. Meta or schlock? Smart money is on the later. I’m cured. While I’m at it, Radway’s book is postmodernist gobbledygook. I think I’ll break that habit as well.
Rob Weir
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