Rabid fandom is one reason I've yet to watch Titanic and never got into Friends, Lost, among many other highly successful films and TV shows. Instead, I tend to dedicate my viewing time to the underdogs, which is to say that a lot of the shows that I do like tend to get cancelled, i.e. Arrested Development, Life, Chicago Code, Human Target, Men of a Certain Age. To date, The Good Wife is the only one of my faves to have escaped that fate.
With that said, you can imagine how resistant I was to reading Rainbow Rowell, the darling of CBReaders. However, because my passion for reading is stronger than my passion for film/TV viewing, I broke down a couple of months ago and read her debut novel, Attachments (2011). In the end, the novel was a satisfying, nostalgic quick read. Much of my enjoyment came from the atypical male protagonist, Lincoln O'Neill, a diffident, non-alpha romantic lead.
Set in 1999, Rainbow Rowell’s Attachments presents love at the dawn of the Internet age. Heartbroken and aimless, Lincoln settles for an overnight job as Internet security, monitoring emails and web histories to make sure no one is slacking off during work. By reading Beth's email exchanges with her co-worker best friend Jennifer, Lincoln falls in love with Beth.
While many love the novel because of smart and snarky exchanges between Beth and Jennifer, it was Lincoln, himself, who got me invested. I mean, he was so atypical...and unreal. In his late 20's, Lincoln had only been in one relationship and was still pining for his high school girlfriend who had dumped in the early days of their college years. Smart, attractive, and not necessarily socially awkward, it was hard for me to imagine that he was so insecure and broken for so long, all because of one girl. This type of male I had not yet encountered in a novel, so the novelty of such a character was appealing to me. That he was the character whose perspective the story was related from greatly added to my enjoyment of it.
The epistolary structure of the novel in the form of email exchanges and the pre-digital dominant age setting of Attachments heighten the sweetness and innocence of this story, so much so that the ending transported me to Jane Austen's denouement in Persuasion (1817), my favorite of her novels. As a debut, Rowell was effective in creating a charming and enjoyable romance with very likable characters.
Well worth the time spent reading it, I finished Attachments with a smile on my face.
Well worth the time spent reading it, I finished Attachments with a smile on my face.
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