Like many readers, I buy more far more books than I will likely ever be able to read in a lifetime (and that’s even taking into account impending retirement in the next couple of years when all the time in the world will be a glorious default).
I buy them in bookstores (mostly), online (sparingly) and also through an online hybrid bookstore/discounter retailer who is unerringly able, thanks no doubt to a gold standard algorithm that has observed my browsing habit with eagle-eyed devotion, to pick exactly what I will want to buy, and usually, oh happy days, what I will enjoy reading.
Novels like Christmas at Lobster Bay by Annie Robertson, the title of which alone feels like a great reading hug, which would likely never have darkened my crowded with festive books path otherwise.
Colour me happy that this happened because this delightful festive romcom is an absolute step above the usual mostly excellent genre fare (which are, for the most part, a joy and a delight to read), serving up a story which is less about finding love for the first time – been that, done that, and the protagonist has the festively decorated T-shirt to prove it – than about how you keep it going when complications arise.
And they surely will make their annoyingly intrusive presence known when you least expect it, and certainly not when you need it (okay, you never need it so that turn of phrase is well near useless; no, I will not be deleting it) and you’re left trying to figure out if all is lost or it’s a just a seasonal bump in the road.
‘Something else will come up,’ said Emma, who, despite her protestations, was already imagining how the house could look, the treatments she could offer and the challenges it would bring. If only I could find a way to persuade Aidan.
That’s the lot of Emma Jenkins, the protagonist of Christmas at Lobster Bay who is well ensconced in her hugely successful guesthouse on the Scottish coast, delivering a superlative experience for everyone who books into her superbly appointed home-away-from-home and feeling like her move from London just two years earlier was exactly what was needed after a traumatic incident left the onetime interior designer feeling like it wasn’t somewhere she wanted to be anymore.
She is also in a relationship with the caring, if not highly communicative, Aidan, who when he is not going all Scrooge-like and sullen is the perfect partner and combined with her good friends like Rhona, Jen and Aidna’s sister Eve, means she is leading what can only be described as a charmed existence.
That is until she and Aidan jointly decide to merge their adjoining properties to expand the guesthouse and decide to renovate in the 12 weeks leading up to Christmas when Emma has her very first Christmas at Lobster Bay promotion planned for those lucky enough to book.
Either one of those things would stretch anyone’s tenacity and patience, but add in Rhona’s once-lovely teenager daughter Skye acting out, Rhona’s pregnancy and love life issues, the gueshouse’s cook’s home troubles, and and Phil, an old high school frenemy giving Emma a gift Aidan’s explicitly said he did not want, and Emma’s once bucolic existence starts to show some serious signs of decidedly non-festive wear and tear.
(courtesy Blake Friedmann Literary Agency)
It’s a LOT and Christmas at Lobster Bay does not skimp on plunging Emma right into the thick of things and letting her stew in them for a good long while.
Leaving aside the fact that Emma sometimes could exercise more than a little social common sense – she’s a brilliantly well-rounded and likeable protagonist but she does test your patience at times; then again, who of us are exemplars of seamlessly good decision-making? – she is very much someone you can identify with, even if the metaphorical plagues that afflict her do descend into soap operatic moments at times.
It helps through all of the issues that Emma confronts that she is, at heart, a good, kind and decent person, and that her found family of friends, employees and the love of her life (well, that’s in doubt for a good slab of Christmas at Lobster Bay) are there for her, even when she exercises less than perfect judgement with them.
But isn’t that one of the loveliest parts of being surrounded by a closeknit group of friends who feel and act, in the best possible ways, like family?
You can make mistakes or they can or everyone can, and the bonds can be stretched and love challenged and you still come out the other side there for each other unconditionally and without question.
‘Sorry,’ grimaced Emma, unable to conceal a smile, and much to her relief, Aidan broke into a small smile too. He pretended to throttle Bertha, for whom the expression “butter wouldn’t melt” might have been invented, then burst into laughter of his own.
That’s likely what’s really lovely about Christmas at Lobster Bay.
It may feel sudsy at times and Emma may stretch her welcome, and haven’t we all been there, but through it all, the bonds that connect her to people and to her new home remain happily unbroken.
Of course, it feels like they have well and truly snapped and twanged and gone ricocheting off into the darkness, and there are many times in Christmas at Lobster Bay when Emma feels like she’s lost her relationship with Aidan and countless numbers of her friends as the renovations on the guesthouse go sideways and the big Christmas promotion looks destined to be an unmitigated disaster.
But what you feel in the black pit of despair that can be life when it’s overloaded beyond your actual ability to cope – Emma, like so many of us, overestimates what she’s capable of pulling off i a short period of time and suffers for it; but again, have we not all done that, seduced by sunny-side optimism and gushingly excitable enthusiasm? – often bears no resemblance to what’s actually going on.
As Christmas at Lobster Bay races towards the big day and all the wondrously good things Emma hopes will be in place by then, the novel beautifully explores what happens when we’re living in the yawning and distressing gulf between perception and reality, and how, when the clouds do part and the dust eventually settles, everything we love will still be in place, still holding us close and maybe making the most wonderful time of the year even more wonderful than we could ever have expected.