Landline
By Rainbow Rowell
St. Martin's Press July 2014
310 pages
From the library
Georgie McCool finds herself making an impossible decision yet again. She and her writing partner Seth are finally getting their big break. But the meeting about their tv show has to happen over the Christmas holiday. Georgie knows that her husband Neal and their two daughters will be disappointed, but she is surprised when Neal takes the two girls and heads to see his family without her. The tension has been building between Georgie and Neal and she wonders if this is the final blow to her marriage. She crashes at her parent's house one night and makes a curious discovery - the old yellow phone in her bedroom connects her to her husband back when they were dating. Can she save her marriage in the present by making different choices in the past?
Rainbow Rowell is mostly known for writing YA juggernaut Eleanor and Park. In Landline, we deal with a set of problems specific to adults - namely balancing professional dreams and family lives. Georgie and Seth have been writing funny things together since college. But late night writing sessions have cut into dinnertime and bedtime over and over again. This causes great tension in Georgie and Neal's marriage and in Georgie's own heart and mind as she has to choose time and again between her passion and the people she loves best. Most of the time, she finds that either decision leaves her unhappy.
The central conceit here that Georgie could talk to husband in the past is a cute but fascinating way to have Georgie look back on the decisions she has made throughout her relationship. It's just a little touch of magical realism that gives Georgie (and us, along for the ride) the opportunity to see what choices work in a young relationship and which ones we regret with hindsight. There is such beautiful development in this story as we see Georgie grapple with her dream of being a writer in opposition to spending time with the family she loves so madly. She knows that her husband has been unhappy and at several points in the book, she wonder if she should let him go and let him be happy. Is love really enough?
Landline's greatest strength is its insight into a marriage over time. While this novel is essentially a light read with a magical telephone, there were several moments when I caught my breath because Rowell explained marriage so perfectly.
“Nobody's lives just fit together. Fitting together is something you work at. It's something you make happen - because you love each other.”
“You don't know when you are twenty-three. You don’t know what it really means to crawl into someone else’s life and stay there. You can’t see all the ways you’re going to get tangled, how you’re going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten—in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems.”
I loved reading Landline. I love that Rowell took a problem familiar to many of us as we try to balance work and family and refused to pass judgement. Instead, she lets us just live alongside Georgie as she makes her decisions, both good and bad. The characters, as always, are quirky and wonderful and my only regret is that I didn't get to spend more time with Georgie, Neal, Seth, and the others who live between the covers of Landline.
I loved reading Landline. I love that Rowell took a problem familiar to many of us as we try to balance work and family and refused to pass judgement. Instead, she lets us just live alongside Georgie as she makes her decisions, both good and bad. The characters, as always, are quirky and wonderful and my only regret is that I didn't get to spend more time with Georgie, Neal, Seth, and the others who live between the covers of Landline.
My reviews of Eleanor and Park and Attachments
