soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2018-08-09 09:28 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2018-08-09 09:28 pm
True Pretenses, by Rose Lerner
I had FIVE MILLION FEELINGS about this book. I laughed, I cried, I spent much of the book internally screaming with delight, I want to shove this book into everyone's hands.
(okay, not everyone's, I recognize that different people have different tastes in entertainment and this wouldn't be up everyone's alley but uh HELLO YES IT IS UP MINE)
This is a marriage-of-convenience romance novel about a low-class Jewish con-man and a properly-brought-up rich young lady who is a leader of her small town's political and social scene, and how much they have in common with each other! Because turns out both of their careers involve basically the same skills, just to different ends. Also they both have younger brothers who they've raised to various degrees on their own and feel extremely protective of.
I just. I just! I am overcome. Where to start??
The way that Lydia and Ash, the leading couple, just so clearly grok each other, deep down, despite everything: Like how at the wedding breakfast they're both super into the way that both of them are so good at working the room, they just....they see each other for who they are and like it.
How both of them have dedicated their entire lives to other people's well-being (Ash: Rafe; Lydia: Jamie but also her entire town) and now they both have someone interested in looking after their needs too, and how revolutionary that feels!
How deeply embedded the story is in community: it's a small town where everyone knows everyone's business and it shows.
How Lydia's friendship with her friend Caro is portrayed: the two of them are very different, and have differing ideas of how to be friends and what friendship means, and it causes a rift, but then they both continue to try because their friendship does matter.
How much (and differently) their Jewishness matters to Ash and Rafe, and how despite being a genuinely good person Lydia still has to learn to not automatically jump to antisemitic assumptions because she's grown up in a racist culture.
How the reader never learns Ash's birth name, because his true name is the one he chooses to identify with. (Even if he can't actually live under the name he identifies with.)
How the siblings are portrayed: oh gosh the way that the familial relationships in this book are SO important to the main characters, like Ash actually describes his brother as the best person in the world TO HIS OWN LOVE INTEREST without following that up with any kind of compliment to her too. And the sibling relationships are all just so like.....yes. Those are clearly siblings. And all four of them have this deep well of wanting to do what's best for their respective sibling but being too close and invested to really know what that looks like? They all try so hard and make some rather significant mistakes! And then keep trying!
But basically just watching these characters I care about be their imperfect, delightful, relentlessly competent selves and how they interact with each other throughout. GOSH. What a book. What an experience. What a good everything.
(Also let me just say that my favourite very minor character is Wrenn, Lydia's dresser who becomes her housekeeper: the kind of person who's very good at her job because she's hyper-efficient because she wants to maximize the time she spends not working. I feel that. I aspire to be that but fall short of the ideal. And the conversation Lydia carefully directs with Wrenn in order to convince her to become the housekeeper is just a delight!)
(okay, not everyone's, I recognize that different people have different tastes in entertainment and this wouldn't be up everyone's alley but uh HELLO YES IT IS UP MINE)
This is a marriage-of-convenience romance novel about a low-class Jewish con-man and a properly-brought-up rich young lady who is a leader of her small town's political and social scene, and how much they have in common with each other! Because turns out both of their careers involve basically the same skills, just to different ends. Also they both have younger brothers who they've raised to various degrees on their own and feel extremely protective of.
I just. I just! I am overcome. Where to start??
The way that Lydia and Ash, the leading couple, just so clearly grok each other, deep down, despite everything: Like how at the wedding breakfast they're both super into the way that both of them are so good at working the room, they just....they see each other for who they are and like it.
How both of them have dedicated their entire lives to other people's well-being (Ash: Rafe; Lydia: Jamie but also her entire town) and now they both have someone interested in looking after their needs too, and how revolutionary that feels!
How deeply embedded the story is in community: it's a small town where everyone knows everyone's business and it shows.
How Lydia's friendship with her friend Caro is portrayed: the two of them are very different, and have differing ideas of how to be friends and what friendship means, and it causes a rift, but then they both continue to try because their friendship does matter.
How much (and differently) their Jewishness matters to Ash and Rafe, and how despite being a genuinely good person Lydia still has to learn to not automatically jump to antisemitic assumptions because she's grown up in a racist culture.
How the reader never learns Ash's birth name, because his true name is the one he chooses to identify with. (Even if he can't actually live under the name he identifies with.)
How the siblings are portrayed: oh gosh the way that the familial relationships in this book are SO important to the main characters, like Ash actually describes his brother as the best person in the world TO HIS OWN LOVE INTEREST without following that up with any kind of compliment to her too. And the sibling relationships are all just so like.....yes. Those are clearly siblings. And all four of them have this deep well of wanting to do what's best for their respective sibling but being too close and invested to really know what that looks like? They all try so hard and make some rather significant mistakes! And then keep trying!
But basically just watching these characters I care about be their imperfect, delightful, relentlessly competent selves and how they interact with each other throughout. GOSH. What a book. What an experience. What a good everything.
(Also let me just say that my favourite very minor character is Wrenn, Lydia's dresser who becomes her housekeeper: the kind of person who's very good at her job because she's hyper-efficient because she wants to maximize the time she spends not working. I feel that. I aspire to be that but fall short of the ideal. And the conversation Lydia carefully directs with Wrenn in order to convince her to become the housekeeper is just a delight!)