While we all love an entertaining meet-cute of two people who we know are destined together forever after having never known each other existed – the sense of romantic fate and destiny is palpably sublime and awww-worthy – there’s also something deliciously enticing about a couple who have been friends all their lives and who then discover they have somehow moved onto love, true love without even realising it.
Very much pivoting on the idea that the best things, and particularly, people can be just under our noses, and with a delightful vibe of Jane Austen’s Emma added into the mix, Emma of 83rd Street, the debut novel from Audrey Bellazza and Emily Harding, is an undoubtable delight, a frothy light and bright romantic comedy that comes with some emotional muscularity and sparkling dialogue that elevates it above many other titles in the genre.
Helping matters along considerably is that Emma Woodhouse, one of two daughters of the very wealthy and highly regarded New York City family which, among other things, is a significant donor to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a joy to hang out with.
Grounded in her own own Upper East Side way, Emma, and her sister Margo, have benefited from being raised by a loving father who knows his place in society and has more than his fair share of anxious concerns (not least what food and drink isn’t good for you) but who has provided a home of love and support which has allowed his daughters to flourish.
It was true. He [George] had spent so much time trying to define his life that somewhere along the way he forgot to live it. Yes, Emma made mistakes, but at least she had the courage to make them in the first place. That was better than sitting on the sidelines so there were never any risks to begin with.
By way of contrast, the Knightley boys, across the backyard from the Woodhouse’s townhouse – there’s no longer a gate and the two families have mixed freely for years – lived under a draconian and loveless father, only saved from blighted lives by being unconditionally and comprehensively adopted into the Woodhouse’s forthright but loving family.
With the two families mixing freely, it’s no surprise that, with some matchmaking intervention by Emma, who sees herself as someone well placed to enhance the lives of others, the younger of the two Knightley boys, Ben, and Emma’s Margo might indeed be well suited.
But surely the same cannot be said for Emma and Ben’s older brother George who snark and spar with merrily affectionate abandon, calling each other by their surnames and doing their best to drive the other, with dialogue witty, clever and lightning – their conversations are sublimely good and a real pleasure to read – absolutely crazy.
But, and this is where Emma of 83rd Street come gorgeously and affectingly alive, we all know that where there is sparring and playful annoyance, there may well be nascent love and so, it will surprise you not a jot, that that is precisely what turns out to be the case.
No surprises there; this is a classic rom-com and the book’s authors know exactly how to bring all the various genre tropes and cliches to vibrantly fresh and original life while paying homage to Austen and her gift for investing the well-trod with refreshingly fun and loveliness.
What is truly impressive, beyond the vivacious, well-rounded characters and the shimmering vivacity of the dialogue, is how well Emma of 83rd Street navigates its way to its happily inevitable conclusion.
There’s nothing predictable about the way Emma and George finally realise what we all know and their family suspect, which makes the race to the romantic finish line all the more delightfully enjoyable to read.
Emma, caught up in transforming the life of new best friend, Nadine, and ensuring her postgrad art studies garner her the internship at the Met she has coveted for years, is adamant that George is nothing more than a very close family friend while George, head of newly-emergent and highly successful, Knightley Capital, can’t see himself with someone like Emma, preferring a string of inconsequential girlfriends, none of whom really seem to have any long-term potential.
Much of the narrative vivacity of Emma of 83rd Street comes from watching them strip away delusion and assumption after delusion and assumption until the truth is staring them in the face; even then, it takes some hugely funny and marvellously entertaining moments for the two close and longstanding friends to realise that maybe what they need is right there in the form of their bestie.
Again, even though you know that’s where this is all headed, the way that Emma of 83rd Street gets there feels so imaginatively alive and smartly, hilariously and affectingly written that you don’t for a second feel like you’re reading any kind of tired rom-com retread.
Emma’s brow creased and her mind swam. Knightley saw her imperfections, he watched her make mistakes, but he also knew it was what made her who she was. She wasn’t perfect. And despite how he tried, Knightley wasn’t either. They were both just trying to figure it out, but at least they had each other.
They would always have each other.
In fact, Emma of 83rd Street is as far from that as you can possibly get.
It feels like a rich and fulsomely realised romance sprung energetically to life, and it doesn’t lose any of the vigour of that deliciously warm and fuzzy Cupid-ian feel throughout, sustaining the sense that you are in the midst of one the grandest and funniest of all romances ever put to paper.
That is the joy of it, really.
You want to lose yourself in a book like Emma of 83rd Street, to push reality to the margins and to be totally subsumed in the idea that love, true love can find its way out from under two peoples’ noses, and make its presence felt, first uncomfortably and then welcomingly, and that’s precisely what happens and you are absolutely there for every scintillatingly alive second of it.
Surging with a romantic vivacity that feels like all your dreamy ideas of love sprung to life, full to the laugh-out-loud brim with snappy, fast-moving, crackling dialogue and characters who are a consummate joy to spend time with, Emma of 83rd Street is in a class above the usual rom-com, a rich, funny and heartfelt ode to Austen, love and marriage (and the festive trimming and trappings of the Christmas season) that cautions against assuming love lies in the usual places and dares to look beyond them to somewhere altogether different (and yet happily close to home) and life-changingly wonderful.