Cbr18bingo Joker
Sally Milz is a writer for The Night Owls, aka TNO, a late night sketch comedy show à la SNL. She is divorced, in her 30s, and has been writing for the show for several years, a dream come true for her. When internationally renowned singer/songwriter Noah Brewster hosts the show, some of Sally’s deeply held opinions about fame, dating and romance — informed by her own not so great experiences — are called into question. For Sally, this is a deeply unsettling situation that she will grapple with for years.
The novel opens in April 2018 when Noah arrives at TNO to host and act as musical guest. Curtis Sittenfeld takes the reader through the week’s events, and it’s clear she did her homework to get this part right. She covers the pitch meetings, relations among writers and cast, the thrill of having a sketch chosen, the rewrites, and all the stress of trying to get a show together in a short amount of time. Sally has two good friends, Viv and Henrietta, who are regulars, and her office partner Danny Horst is both writer and regular. Sally has no interest whatsoever in being on the stage herself; she prefers being behind the scenes, helping with rewrites and overseeing the production of her skits. This week, three of hers have been chosen, a rare feat. One of the sketches, The Danny Horst Rule, will become the focus of some discomfort for Noah and Sally. It so happens that Danny, who is a Pete Davidson type, is dating a gorgeous starlet. Sally has noticed that a number of TNO guys like Danny seem to be able to “date up”; beautiful successful women will date ordinary guys while handsome male stars like Noah don’t date average looking women. Noah, who has had the kind of dating life that paparazzi love to follow, is uncomfortable with the sketch while Danny is totally cool with it. As the week progresses, Danny’s relationship with starlet Annabel turns into a rollercoaster ride while Noah seems to maybe possibly be flirting with Sally. And Sally is at a complete loss over what to do with this. She is attracted to Noah (who wouldn’t be?) but she cannot believe that he would really be attracted to her. She has misread signals before (see her ex-husband and a fellow writer who rebuffed her overtures years ago), and after a wild but pretty good week, she and Noah have an interaction at the after after party that will stay with both of them long after it’s over.
At this point the novel jumps ahead two years to the summer of 2020 and the pandemic. Sally has decided to return to her hometown Kansas City to stay with her 81 year old stepfather Jerry, rethink her commitment to TNO and maybe write a screenplay. Out of the blue, she gets an email from Noah. This section of the novel is written as email exchanges and I really enjoyed it probably because it reminded me of when I started getting to know the person who would become my husband. We were in different cities and wrote letters to each other (email was still very new way back then). At any rate, in writing, with time to think, both Noah and Sally engage in some amusing banter while getting to know each other better and eventually work their way around to what happened in 2018.
I really liked the way Sittenfeld incorporated the pandemic into the novel and the story of the relationship between Noah and Sally. Through the stressful in-person situation in 2018 and then the isolated, more thoughtful, written interactions in 2020, we get a better sense of who these people are at heart. They are both a little messed up but also both pretty decent people. This was a very enjoyable read for the late days of summer.
