MARCH 10 2018 LISTENER 55
in a romance novel when you’re not
invested in the leading lady and when
the author is painfully out of touch.
For Essie’s outburst is not an isolated
incident. A lovely, sunny woman who
cheats (once) gets her comeuppance in
the most biblical of ways. A bloke who
fancies a woman – yet is not keen to ask
her out – asks her not to sleep with her
ex, telling himself it’s “good old-fash-
ioned advice”. He admires a different
woman for not going on a single date
in four years. Message: female sexuality
is a bit icky and it’s a thing that can be
used up. Worse, it will turn decent men
off. Contain at all costs.
Mansell is not a strong enough
writer to make up for this. She uses
redundant words – “currently” – recaps
frequently and unnecessarily and tacks
explanations on to the end of too many
otherwise-funny exchanges.
She drops her characters into
emotional turmoil without doing any
donkey work to make that turmoil stack
up. “It really was time to stop thinking
about Paul,” Essie chides herself, when
she has barely thought about him (Paul’s
her ex) and has spent the previous few
chapters obsessed with a new guy.
That new guy comes with his own
set of cringes. His big emotional
reveal to Essie is rendered laughable,
his motivation for misleading her at
their meet-cute utterly overblown and
ludicrous.
On balance? A book that reads like
it was phoned in, about a woman
who is hard to like, underpinned by
sexism that has well and truly had its
day.
In bookshops Mansell keeps com-
pany with the likes of Marian Keyes,
Cathy Kelly, Lauren Weisberger
and Danielle Hawkins. I can’t imag-
ine choosing this book over any of
theirs, unless I were about to get on
a plane – in which
case my anti-anx-
iety drugs would
make me forget
it five minutes
later. l
THIS COULD CHANGE
EVERYTHING, by Jill
Mansell (Hachette NZ,
$34.99)Message: female
sexuality is a bit icky
and it’s a thing that can
be used up. Worse, it
will turn decent men off.
Contain at all costs.
Traumas have to surface; terrors have to
be channelled. It’s the most inert part
of the narrative and should have been
trimmed or redistributed.
I like Restless Souls also because it’s
open-hearted. It takes on big emotions,
deep hurts. I like its helter-skelter eager-
ness, its yahoo dialogue, the authentic,
affectionate cadences of men verbally
smacking one another around the
head. Okay, its prose postures, and its
humour has too many regur-
gitated biscuits and bottles of
Jamesons. But it’s a young guy’s
first novel, remember.
The trio do come through.
They even hug, though “that’s
not really how we are”. And
they’d die for one another,
bro. l
RESTLESS SOULS, by Dan
Sheehan (Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, $34.99)by NICHOLAS REIDY
ou have to give points to a starter
novelist who gamely tries to kick new
life into an old genre. But in the end,
you have to admit that the old genre
is still the old genre.
In her first novel, English newcomer Laura
Carlin produces a full-on Gothic thriller. It’s
got lashings of the expected materials. Set in
early-19th-century England in the years just
before Victoria took the throne, it has many
footsteps-in-the-fog scenes in squalid old
London. Plus a degenerate, opium-addicted
squire up to no good. Plus a chase through a
dark tunnel. Plus “resurrection men” killing
people to sell corpses to anatomy students.
Plus a hidden document that conveniently
reveals everything about a fiendish plot.
Hidden family secrets, babies swapped at
birth, contested inheritance, etc.
Carlin’s trick is to combine these familiar
Gothic trappings with a detective story as
two women, Hester and Rebekah, join forces
to get to the bottom of things. And for good
measure they are lesbians, which adds a
love-story element. No explicit sex, mind, as
readers of Gothic romance aren’t into that.
Just fondling and yearning and OTT passion-
ate words. And some “damsel in distress”
scenes where the damsel is waiting to be
rescued by another damsel.
If Gothic melodrama is your cup of poison,
this one does the trick. Carlin writes well
and doesn’t produce any glaring anachro-
nisms. Only occasionally does the dialogue
sound a tad 21st century. But you do have
to negotiate two scenes in which old crones
conveniently explain all
the mysteries and loose
ends. These are like the
final moments of an
antique Hollywood movie.
One for the addicts, who
won’t be disappointed. l
THE WICKED COMETH, by
Laura Carlin (Hodder &
Stoughton, $35)A wicked read
this way comes
This debut tale has all
the familiar trappings
of Gothic melodrama.