0
0
Rose’s husband of twenty-five years leaves her
for her assistant. Worse still, she soon finds herself unemployed. She and her husband,
Nathan, have two grown children who no longer live at home, but she still cares for an
elderly mother, an elderly neighbor and an elderly cat. How will she ever
survive?
Given the title, I was anticipating something on the order of
Bridget Jones’s 25th Diary. You know, a story with lots of crazy relatives,
outrageous scenes of betrayal and abandonment, cat fights, and one-liners. I couldn’t
wait for Rosie to whip out some put-downs to devastate the rhymes-with-witch who stole
her husband and her job. But right from the start, this novel avoided the easy, cheap
humor implied in the title. Instead, Buchan has written a realistic portrait of a woman
who rises above this comic novel situation. Buchan completely turns the whole enterprise
around into one of the most compassionate books I’ve read in a long
time.
Start reading and you’ll be drawn in very easily. The advantage of
the soap-opera intro is that it propels you into the story before you catch on that
things aren’t progressing the way you’d expect. The book starts with some classic
elements of retribution. There is the aforementioned back-stabbing coworker and Rose’s
Scruples-like fashion transformation with the help of a convenient Parisian friend
(and what woman wouldn’t love to have one of those?) There’s a daughter on the
eccentric side, a former lover who casts a long shadow and peripheral characters that
initially show Rose no mercy. Yet soon every character reveals a deeper side as their
own stories develop and progress off the page. There are no throwaway characters here,
and it makes for a rich brew of a story.
Don’t let the bait-and-switch
effect of the title and opening scenes confuse you. This is an elegant, well-crafted
story about mature people. Rose faces and conquers outrageous circumstances with the
dignity of royalty. If living well is truly the best revenge, then maybe there’s
revenge in here after all. Well done, dear girl, well done.
