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the_plodding_historian 's review for:
Never Look Desperate
by Rachel Matthews, Rachel Matthews
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I have just finished this, so I’m struggling to formulate my thoughts. Not in a bad way. This book will be heading to my bookshelves, not to the secondhand bookshop. It’s set in Melbourne post all their COVID-19 lockdowns. Three characters, Bernard, Goldie and Minh, are struggling with grief and attempting to regain some semblance of life after what was effectively two years of lockdown for Melbourne. I struggled with Goldie’s character, even as the source of her grief was revealed. Can someone really change after what was pretty much 65 years of self-protection against trauma and rejection? It was hard to warm to her seeing how her distance was impacting Bernard’s own grief and mental health. And of course, being the romantic I am, I had to keep reading to the end, even though the late night would mean struggling through my workday, because I needed a happy or at least a hopeful ending. As I turned the pages, the ones to the left growing and those at the right dwindling away with no sense of hope or happiness looming, my throat and chest tightened with anxiety. When I read what turned out to be the final few lines, a deep breath of release and a welling at the tear ducts.
This is one of those books that you don’t even realise is well written because it’s so well done and the story and the characters have got into your being that you are oblivious to all that technical business and become lost in the narrative, only being pulled back into the real world when you have to turn to the other side in bed or move the book to your other hand or get up to go to the loo. But that is only a momentary disruption because two or three sentences and you’re right back in there.
The wee blurb on the back cover mentions pineapple undies, so I thought comedy, not taking in what is effectively a warning, this book is a touch ‘Fleabag’. I mean for goodness sake Lisa, it even says, “tragi-comedy”. As you can tell, I’ve been left a little emotionally discombobulated.
But that’s okay; I like it. I will be returning to this one. And I will be telling other people to read it; especially us 50-somethings who have found ourselves as much disorientated by the events of the past five years as all the young people, but left with little sense of hope that there is time; it all might just be too late to regroup and find a Plan B. Okay. Obviously, I need to read the last couple of chapters again; get that little glimmer of hope I had 22 minutes ago back!
This is one of those books that you don’t even realise is well written because it’s so well done and the story and the characters have got into your being that you are oblivious to all that technical business and become lost in the narrative, only being pulled back into the real world when you have to turn to the other side in bed or move the book to your other hand or get up to go to the loo. But that is only a momentary disruption because two or three sentences and you’re right back in there.
The wee blurb on the back cover mentions pineapple undies, so I thought comedy, not taking in what is effectively a warning, this book is a touch ‘Fleabag’. I mean for goodness sake Lisa, it even says, “tragi-comedy”. As you can tell, I’ve been left a little emotionally discombobulated.
But that’s okay; I like it. I will be returning to this one. And I will be telling other people to read it; especially us 50-somethings who have found ourselves as much disorientated by the events of the past five years as all the young people, but left with little sense of hope that there is time; it all might just be too late to regroup and find a Plan B. Okay. Obviously, I need to read the last couple of chapters again; get that little glimmer of hope I had 22 minutes ago back!