CBR Bingo: Craft, because much of this is about the Craft of Acting and how its pursuit irrevocably ties together our main characters.
Clearly I am back on the reading train and angling to make up for lost time.
I’m not entirely sure where I got this recommendation from–I think it was a Goodreads one–but it’s definitely a certain type of book for a certain type of reader and I don’t think that reader is me. Hence I’m being a bit kinder in the overall star rating than I would be normally, because that seems fair.
There’ll be a bit of spoiler in this, which I think is required to really get at the crux of the book. Our main characters are AJ and Noah, whom we first meet in 2013, mid-rehearsal, before we flip back to 2000 when AJ is a bored worker at a local Blockbusters, spending her days watching a Star Trek-y show called Astronauticals and writing fanfiction about her favorite character Glimmerette on ff.net. Who walks in but Noah Drew, the town’s most famous denizen–the latest member of the Drew family, who are akin to the Barrymores in that every generation has spawned award winning Hollywood stars. After a run-in with Noah’s aunt Eudora (who, coincidentally, played Glimmerette), AJ spends the summer alternating between working at the video store, becoming friends with Noah, and undergoing a weird Shakespeare-slash-improv intensive under the tutelage of Eudora, who sees the spark of greatness both within AJ and when AJ and Noah are acting together.
AJ has lost her opportunity to get out of her podunk town via a sports scholarship to Brown because she broke her arm (note: is that right? I feel like that is…not right) so she seizes upon the potential of maybe becoming an actress. NYU? Julliard? She’s also really, really into Noah who is constantly described as a tall handsome hunk of man (and whom I could never not see as Jacob Elordi) and who definitely is into her as well, if the spontaneous kiss-whilst-in-a-see-through-wet-white-shirt has anything to say about it. All of her dreams seem within reach, especially with a recommendation letter from Eudora, until one day when Noah disappears, Eudora tells her she’s merely average, and the door get shut in AJ’s face.
That’s a lot of build up, but it’s necessary because we then spend an AGONIZING THIRTEEN YEARS watching AJ drink and schlump her way through a crippling series of self-esteem issues. AJ and Noah are ONE TRUE LOVES, except Noah clearly did this shit thing and is convinced, with good reason, that he and AJ can’t be together and more to the point he can’t be with anyone ever [he’s got the recessive gene for Huntington’s, and after watching his mother die he can’t bear to be with AJ for a temporary period of time before his body goes].
There’s a lot of pseudo magical description of their acting prowess and process together–when they’re in the zone, AJ and Noah are practically mind readers, or perhaps (to stick with a metaphor that matches the scifi show that is always at the heart of their interactions) they undergo a mind meld. It’s like there’s a golden thread between them, they’re in the black room together, they can communicate telepathically, and all of it really threads a fine line between eye roll and meaningful writing on the nature of a close acting bond. Which is to say, sometimes I’m into it and other times I think it’s a bit of a joke.
Also a lot of the same issue that plagued The Personal Librarian, wherein our narrator has to TELL YOU the underlying nuance of EVERYTHING which both makes the book super long and saps it of some of its emotional heft. An example–for [reasons], Noah and AJ decide that they’re going to do one final 12-night show together as a goodbye to one another, and then walk off the stage and never speak again.
AJ: that’s very Marina Abramović of you.
Also AJ, in omniscient narrator mode: I was referring to the infamous walk along the great wall, after which Marina Abramović and Ulay never saw each other again.
Perhaps the second line is required to contextualize AJ’s comment for the audience, but if so it’s a bad line for AJ. Because by having to explain it, it ruins the point of her making the reference? As in, if your character is knowledgeable about performance art and improv, they would make a comment about Abramović/Ulay but then would not mentally recount the story of said reference, because that would imply they aren’t the type of person to make such references on the fly.
That ALL aside, 90% of this book could have been solved by the two of them talking to one another like the adults that they sort of aren’t, since they’re only in their early 30s by the time the book ends. It overall felt like a deep, meaningful plot with a schlocky ending–another book this year (looking at your, The Correspondent) unable to commit to the bittersweet ending that your plot needed.
