I just tore through Someone Else's Love Story, Joshilyn Jackson's newest novel. It features the funniest sex scene I have ever read, one that somehow manages to be affectionate and hilarious at the same time. Some observations:
1. William reminded me of Maxon in Shine Shine Shine: spectrum-y and super-smart, but you don't mess with him unless you want your kidneys handed to you. Even their names are alike (CVCCVC: a labial phoneme and a checked front vowel, followed by a consonant pair that most people wouldn't think of as a pair (/ks/ and /lj/), ending with a nasal phoneme). I was thinking that Shine Shine Shine must have been an influence, but I just read an interview in which Jackson said she'd been thinking about William for ten years. I'm still curious about that confluence.
2. Shandi reminds me of some earlier Jackson characters, a little broken and a lot determined, and Natty reminds me of Fisher from Between, Georgia with his grumpy-old-person-in-a-small-body mannerisms. This is not to say that SELS borrows too much from earlier books, only that it makes me say, "Oh, yes, I've known someone like you before."
3. She keeps coming back to this idea that it's hard to be with the people you love but it's even harder without them. She does it in a way that is beautiful and true and kind of painful all at once.
4. This is the first time I recall seeing a Catholic character in one of her novels. And this is a minor quibble, but she gets the birth control thing wrong. Surely someone like Bridget would have a Creighton practitioner all lined up.
5. I'm glad I read My Own Miraculous first. It sets up the novel effectively and creepily.
Recent Comments