(courtesy Hachette Australia)
It has long intrigued this reviewer why it is that we love “found family” stories so much.
It’s not that they don’t present a comforting and warmly lovely scenario; after all, who doesn’t love the idea of sadness, loss and crushing social isolation being countered by slowly becoming part of a group of disparate who end up becoming the very source of unconditional love and support everyone needs if they are to fully realise what it means to be human?
The more pressing question for me has always been – why do these redemptive stories strike such a strong chord, not just with me – as a kid who was comprehensively bullied both at school and church in different ways, the mystery of why I love these narratives is really no mystery at all – but with a mass of people who clearly need to feel like the sadness of being all alone in life has an antidote, and a powerfully enlivening one that that?
The Lonely Hearts Quiz League by Lauren Farnsworth goes quite a long way to explaining why finding your people really makes such a palpable and powerful difference, beyond the obvious of course.
By placing its characters in life situations that don’t have easy solutions, the simplistic kind that Hollywood movies like beyond they can materialise with little pain or angst, and thus compacted screen time, novels like The Lonely Hearts Quiz League offer very real hope that the pain of actual real life isn’t just about to be relieved but expansively done away with too.
‘Well, do you [Jaime] think Luke will be up for this whole thing? The tournament, I mean. Perhaps he’d enjoy it.’
‘Oh, I suppose. I don’t know.’
‘Listen, what times is your lunch break at the shop? Why don’t we meet for a coffee tomorrow? I [Bryony] don’t have many – you know – many friends either.’
Farnsworth does not go easy with her ensemble of characters.
Theirs is a slow and torturously gradual but pleasing road to found family as a group of inarguably disparate individuals who join together for a bit of social quizzing fun thanks to an online ad, find themselves meaning more to each other than simply specialised stores of comp-winning knowledge.
The comp begins to matter of course, it matters a lot, as a local pub quiz becomes something altogether more competitive and London-wide, but not nearly as much, though no one quite gets it at the time, as a way of dealing with long-dormant and much-ignored issues of self that suddenly need to be addressed if these people are to have any hope of finding any joy, peace or happiness in life.
The stakes are actually high; not just in the quiz comp which comes with a hefty prize that could make a real difference to various lives, but in the lives led away from the dingy but loveable old-fashioned pub where the quizzes take place and which, unexpectedly becomes a home away from home for so many.
As The Lonely Hearts Quiz League kicks into higher gear, and secrets are revealed and broken psyches and wrecked souls plumbed, it becomes powerfully apparent why we need people who give a damn around us, and how their very presence, unconditionally expressed, can make or break the future course of our lives.
(courtesy official Lauren Farnsworth Instagram)
The brilliance of The Lonely Hearts Quiz League is that it doesn’t ever rush things while somehow still keep the storyline humming meaningfully and thoughtfully along.
As we meet Bryony, who’s lost sight of who she was before a very early pregnancy changed the course of her life, and Harry, who’s stuck to a version of the past and the person who defined it in ways that are no longer sustainable, and Jaime, new-ish to London and struggling to make her big move to the city with boyfriend Luke work, we come face-to-face with the way life can bend and shape things until what we expected to have happen over the course of our lives becomes a strange and distant memory.
That might be okay, of course, although it rarely is if left unexamined and peace made, except for the fact that unexplored past selves often become present-destabilising people of the present day, something that all three people, and troubled host Donna who brings them all together for the glory of winning and a pretty victors’ purse, begin to appreciate as the joy of unexpected connection begins to change them in some really wonderful but hard-won ways.
And that’s the key with this nuanced and slowly-unfurled story – no one has an easy ride of it, and while that might seem a little cruel, it means that the novel feels relatably real and honest because the happy ending, such as it is, means so much more because each person has had to fight hard to get there.
‘I’m afraid that leaves us too vulnerable to legal repercussions. But if that’s the way you feel, then why don’t you hand in your notice?’
Because then, Donna thought, oh, because then I can’t blame you and it will all be my fault.
It’s a fight that is often fought within each person, something true of all of us.
But what Farnsworth recognises and beautifully expresses in The Lonely Hearts Quiz League is that we often don’t have the strength or momentum to address those inner demons, who are very good at disguising themselves and which loathe being brought out into the harsh light of existential day, without the love and support of people who, even if they don’t realise they are doing it, are providing the very conditions of safety and love that we need to fight those big internal battles.
That’s what makes what could otherwise have been a gloriously light and soul restorative delight, and it is in so many ways wonderfully written ways, such a pleasure to read.
It admits to how big these battles are and these long-entertained internal enemies of self are, and doesn’t pretend that becoming close and meaningful friends with a bunch of strangers suddenly changes things.
But change things it does, and as Bryony, Jaime, Harry and Donna begin to relax into, and out trust in, even subconsciously, the fact that they are far becoming far more than teammates, The Lonely Hearts Quiz League takes us to places where hope means something, hoped-for selves have a chance of finding real and lasting expression, and where all those long-suppressed wounds and broken defensive positions, adopted to respond to the pain and hurt of the past, can finally find some healing.
It’s a warm hug with real emotional muscle and considerable heft and it leaves you feeling not simply buoyed by how each and every one of those characters changes, but that life can be something that changes, that gets better and it might start with something as disarmingly simple as a pub quiz on an otherwise remarkable night in London …