Divine Mistakes

When I worked at Borders, we had the option of picking out ARCs (and sometimes CDs) as a reward for excellent customer service (or when we stayed late, or what have you). I have had several on my TBR shelf for quite a long time now, and Alphabet Weekends by Elizabeth Noble was among them. I chose it because it seemed like it would be some nice fluff reading, ‘chick lit’ as it were, but the peripheral relationships ended up making it much richer than I anticipated.

The book centers around Natalie and Tom, best friends from early childhood who are still single in their mid thirties. Natalie was dumped by her long-term boyfriend right before Christmas, and Tom, who has long been under the impression that their relationship had the potential for more than friendship, suggests spending 26 days/weekends together, doing a different activity according to each letter of the alphabet. By the end of which, he claims, she will be in love with him. However, the book also explores the relationships between Patrick, Tom’s brother, and his wife Lucy, who are both going through different personal struggles, as well as Nicholas and Anna, Natalie’s parents.

I will admit that I’m a fan of the ‘lifelong friendships blossoming into adult romances’ style of romance, if only because one of my earliest fictional crushes was Gilbert Blythe. So I was prepared to enjoy the relationship between the central couple from the beginning. However, I felt there was always lurking the potential for the “nice guy syndrome”: a guy who is there for you when you need him, goes shopping or whatever with you, and expects sex as a reward for doing all of that lame, boring stuff for you. Often lists and/or essays about how girls shouldn’t bitch about why they can never find a ‘nice guy’ because they were there all along, etc., are circulated online, and the underlying assumption is that the ‘nice guy’ isn’t nice at all. Rather, he just does things he knows the girl will appreciate so he can guilt her into having sex.

That, however, is another rant for another time, because thankfully Tom doesn’t slip into that category. You watch his emotions grow from a crush and a thought that this little alphabet experiment might just be a fun way to get Natalie’s mind off of her breakup, to the realization that he really, truly loves her. Natalie makes the same journey, although she also has to deal with her other friends and family essentially pushing her along; not forcefully, necessarily, but the constant hints and nudges are there. You feel how weird it would be to suddenly begin to view a person you’ve known as a platonic friend for over twenty years, as instead someone you would want to build a romantic future with. I will admit, however, that in the end, I still felt as though the ‘best friends’ to ‘lovers’ transition would be weird for me, if I were in that position, but I’m sure that’s just my personal issues coming into play.

The most intriguing relationship in the book, in my opinion, was that between Natalie’s parents, Anna and Nicholas. 6 months before the book begins, Anna finds a lump in her breast and is almost certain that she will die of breast cancer, as had her mother. The lump turns out to be benign and the scare is just that: scary, but not fatal. However, the thought of eminent death made Anna reexamine her life and sink into a depression, regretting the things she hadn’t done:

“Your mum has spent her whole adult life raising you three, and part of what she feels is that there’s nothing else for her now that she’s done that. [...] she knows that she could have been so much more. She’s frustrated, and resentful, and thwarted, and angry. And she feels guilty and stupid about it, and as if she’s taking it out on me and you girls, without you understanding why.”
- (p. 138/39)

Part of what I find so intriguing about this couple is the role that cancer plays, or rather doesn’t, in the emotional dissonance. Most books would tackle it as “Mum has breast cancer, but she rallies and fights it! Hurrah!” and there’s nothing wrong with that. It is particularly interesting to me to explore the buildup, the terrifying anticipation and then the unexpected anticlimax. It’s so much more than menopause (or post), empty nest syndrome, or what have you. It depicts depression as something real, and shows its effects on loved ones, as well as the feeling of hopelessness and lack of control. The fact that Anna seeks medical help, and that her family recognize her depression as a medical condition and are willing to help her through it, is wonderful to me.

Toward the end of the book, Nicholas has two strokes, the second much more serious than the first. Anna’s improving mental health, in addition to having someone to care for again (although the latter isn’t emphasized as much as it might have been, which I liked), allows them to continue to have a wonderful, loving relationship, despite his hospitalization.

“Don’t be [sorry for me]. I’ve had more happiness than most people. I’m still lucky, Natalie. I have you, and your sisters, and my grandchildren, and my health. And I still have your father. The man I’ve loved, and who has loved me, for almost all of my adult life. How many people can truly say that? He’s not the same on the outside, maybe, but he’s still in there - you can see that too - and I’m going to love him for the rest of his life, however long that is, and whatever form it takes.”
- (p. 343)

This loving longevity (alliteration FTW) is in sharp contrast to the last of the main couples. Lucy and Patrick have been married for 6 or 7 years (I don’t remember if the book specifies). When they first meet, Lucy is married and has recently had a daughter. However, when the daughter is 3 (or 6, again specifics fail me) months old, her husband leaves them, and Patrick is there to help her pick up the pieces. They get married, and have a son together; at the beginning of the book, the daughter, Bella, is 8, and the son, Ed, is 4. Lucy has apparently felt sparks and sexual tension with her best friend Marianne’s husband, Alec, for several years, but has never acted on it. When Patrick loses his job before Christmas, he feels it has emasculated him in many ways; he can no longer provide for his wife and family (the role he gave himself when he ‘rescued’ her, as it were, after her first husband left her), nor is he physically able to have sex with her. His unemployment leads to depression, moodiness, and so forth (from personal experience, I can say this depiction is pretty much spot on). Meanwhile, Lucy finally gives in to her feelings for Alec, and their affair begins.

Sounds like something out of a soap opera, no? I’ll be honest and say that infidelity is one of my squicks, so this whole mess was difficult for me to read in the first place. What I enjoyed was how Noble handled it: she didn’t wrap it up with a bow and everyone either went back to their original spouses, or the cheaters got together and somehow or other everyone lived happily ever after. In the end, Alec stays with Marianne, which leaves Lucy desolate, and she in turn admits to Patrick that she isn’t in love with him anymore, and he leaves their home. The ending is vague in terms of how things work out, in detail, with Lucy and Patrick, but it is solidly confirmed that they are no longer together, nor is she with Alec. She ends up losing her husband, her lover, and her best friend, all because, in my opinion, she married her rebound. She does tell Patrick that she did need him, when her first husband left her, and that she was happy with him, before the affair began. However, it also opened her eyes to what she had been missing, and now, though depressed and lonely, she can begin to do more things for herself. When Patrick was unemployed, he freaked out at the suggestion that Lucy start working again, claiming that it was his job to provide for her, protect her, etcetera.

The whole thing makes me want to reread Madame Bovary, actually. I might do it, at that. Anyway, the book became much more than ‘chick lit’, in my opinion, and the secondary (of sorts) relationships make it definitely worth reading.

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