Nina Kenwood: Peppers her prose with plenty of banter. Photos / supplied
Nina Kenwood: Peppers her prose with plenty of banter. Photos / supplied
Anna and her mother are driving to the wedding of Anna’s best friend. In her luggage, Anna’s mother has crammed five copies of Anna’s debut novel to sell to wedding guests. She has also brought a gift for Anna, a lacy French bra. Her mother thinks it’s time for Anna,who is single after a break-up, to get back out there: “And it won’t hurt to have a nice bra on hand when you do.”
The wedding weekend takes up the first third of Australian Nina Kenwood’s novel. Anna, the bridesmaid, is staying at a rented house with the bride and groom, another couple and a single man. The male of the other couple is Anna’s ex, and she hasn’t got over the relationship. The single man is Mac, a slightly famous actor. In the first of many pratfalls, Anna bursts in on a half-naked Mac and notices that “even his exposed butt had a certain charisma to it”. Devastatingly for Anna, she discovers her ex’s girlfriend is pregnant. Anna’s relationship with him broke up because Anna wanted a baby and her ex didn’t. But things take a turn for the lustful when Mac and Anna have a passionate encounter in the men’s bathroom at the wedding venue.
Back at the house, the rest of the night turns into a bedroom farce with doors bursting open, sets of parents arriving and much bed-hopping.
In the next two sections, we follow Anna as she visits New York, writes a second novel and starts her dream job managing an independent bookshop in Melbourne. She falls deeply in love, but the relationship is doomed for various reasons. Settling for a somewhat passionless but enduring contentment is the only option. Or is it?
There is a nice balance of light and dark, although the dark isn’t very heavy. It’s more melancholic: the ticking of the biological clock, the realisation that “the way you think your life will go … might not happen”, yearning and the relinquishment of passion. That’s not to say these moments are not affecting.
Long-lasting, supportive female friendships are central to the plot, giving Kenwood plenty of opportunity for banter. The long-running in-jokes are great fun and the dialogue, at its best, reads like a Nora Ephron film script. Her movies – When Harry Met Sally, You’ve got Mail and Heartburn – are all referenced. Even more, the middle section is set in a snowy New York at Christmas.
There’s also Marian Keyes-style observational humour. Keyes likes to deploy two categories of men: “feathery strokers” and “beardy glarers”. In a similar vein, Kenwood has the “unusually slim … fast moving and dextrous” fingers of a wannabe suitor that suddenly repulse Anna when they do up buttons. Even his bowing is yuck, “… something about how low he goes in the bow … makes [Anna] uncomfortable. Should tall men bow so low?”
The novel satisfies in all the ways you need a romantic comedy to be satisfying. Appealing and believable, Anna’s romantic troubles tug at your heart and Kenwood’s gift for humour means the comedy is also well and truly covered.
