Landline by Rainbow Rowell
4/5 Stars
Cover Courtesy of Goodreads.com
Following Eleanor and Park and even more so Fangirl, I am positive that Rainbow Rowell, like my favorite author, John Green, has a way of understanding human relationships and people. Her characters never feel forced or anything other than tangible and so real you could practically feel the softness of Park’s hands or Levi’s flannel. Her new book released this summer, which was her first adult novel since Attachments, was no different.
The thing is that I don’t read adult books very often. I know that I’ve been a legal adult for two years now, but I’ve always identified more with the teenagers of YA fiction. New Adult just doesn’t do it for me, because I find that most of them that I’ve read feature semi-abusive relationships that are pawned off as “romantic” and just don’t capture the early twenties and college years. But I’ve recently started to branch out into older fiction and television. I’ve become obsessed with Felicity, the college drama starring Keri Russell that was popular in the 90’s, because I finally understand the portrayal of college.
Landline was incredibly relatable even though I don’t have children or a real job yet. Georgie McCool is a TV sitcom writer who is about to get her big break, but this means not going to Nebraska with her husband Neal and children for Christmas so she can work on the script. While separated, Georgie discovers that the landline in her childhood home somehow reaches Neal circa their college years. The two reconnect and Georgie struggles to decide if she should change the trajectory of their future years or if she should let events occur how they did even if that means a less-than-perfect life and marriage for both of them. I won’t tell you all how the book ends, but it got me thinking about themes of balancing career ambition and relationships and the post-college life.
I appreciated that the book flipped between present day and how they got together in college, because as a college student myself, I found these moments the most relatable. I too work on a college newspaper, and I loved hearing about the staff dynamic. By alternating, the adult aspect of the novel never got to be too much for me, which can happen when I read adult fiction.
The romance between Neal and Georgie was similar to Eleanor and Park’s because it showed two very average people falling in love in very average ways, but the way that Rowell writes about these average occurrences makes me realize (which I think is her goal) that these average, small moments are the real miracles in life. Her writing shows me that the most romantic love is often not the kind that is seen on TV or in RomComs, it’s more average but also better.
I think it can be really damaging to young people, girls especially, to only see these intense and all-consuming romances like those between Bella and Edward, because it ruins them for real relationships. Love just isn’t like Twilight, The Hunger Games, or even I hate to say it The Fault in Our Stars. But it is like Landline, and I love reading books like that, because they give me a healthy image of what a relationship can be when it’s good.
The book also spurred thought in my mind of what’s important. Obviously, at my stage in life I’m not at a point where I need to choose between a relationship and a career, but I’ve always thought I would be a die-hard career person. That I would always put my goals and myself over boys, but Georgie wasn’t like that at all. It wasn’t that she was giving up on her dreams for the cookie-cutter housewife role, she was just realizing and accepting that love and family is more important to her. Because if there isn’t anyone there to share your life with, are all the accomplishments even that great. It’s kind of like the question of if a tree falls and there isn’t anyone there to hear it did it make a sound?
Besides the deeper themes that this book laid out, I was impressed by how funny Rowell made Georgie. I mean she is supposed to be a comedy writer, but Rowell’s past characters have been more serious. Comedy is so difficult to pull off in fiction, but I was pleased to say that she did so successfully. Also, can we just talk for a second about how gorgeous the cover design was (or really any Rowell cover design)?
Was this my favorite Rainbow Rowell book? No, that probably goes to Fangirl, but it’s definitely on par with Eleanor and Park. I will continue to read her books and model my idea of realistic love off of her characters.