Is it possible for something as confectedly light and escapist as a rom-com to have a sense of grounded, real world humanity?
And even if it is, wouldn’t that break the gossamer-lovely romantic spell that every rom-com tries to weave in ways beguiling and heart-stirringly sweet?
Well, while it’s not a definitive answer, since it is just one novel (but what a fine novel it is!), Nora Goes Off Script by the immeasurably talented Annabel Monaghan would seem to indicate that you can indeed have your magical romantic dream and some sage lessons about life and living all in one highly entertaining bundle.
And if anyone should know how possible/impossible that kind of strangely pleasing romantic alchemy is it’s the titular protagonist, romance film writer for The Romance Channel (TRC) Nora Hamilton, who lives in upstate New York on one of those quintessentially gorgeous properties, albeit with a house that lets in too much of the winter cold, right near a town that is country Americana personified.
But while the setting might be idyllically bucolic, Nora’s life is anything but save for her kids, ten-year-old Arthur and eight-year-old Bernadette, with her husband Ben, in trademark narcissistic fashion, having left his marriage and family to find himself.
Or something.
Nora is actually relieved after enduring a largely loveless marriage defined by her unending attempts to assuage Ben’s sense that he has got life down pat and that it’s everyone else that is failing to helping him realise his dreams of the start-up to end all start-ups.
I hear something move behind me, and I turn to see Leo wrapped in a duvet, asleep on my porch swing. His slightly too long dark hair covers one of his eyes, and he is breathtakingly handsome. A half-empty bottle of tequila (wait, my tequila!) sits on the ground. No glass in sight. I consider going for my phone. My friends would get a kick out of a photo. (P. 21)
Still the departure of the man who habitually failed to see or acknowledge that his much put-down wife was carrying the family professionally, financially and emotionally – not only was he blind to his many failings but he elevated himself constantly in contravention of all evidence to the contrary – really was a source of liberation for Nora.
In fact, while her ex-husband’s self-engineered removal from the family hurt the kids who felt abandoned by a father who, while he never really emotionally present in the first place was still their dad, it gave Nora the chance to find herself and to forge a life on her terms, which as Nora Goes Off Script opens means that she is handling things independently and without the need of man perfectly well, thank you very much.
This is where we first glimpse, and what a refreshingly empowering sight it is, that Nora Goes Off Script means to have its light-as-air romance with all the redemptive joy that implies while delivering up a protagonist who knows how dark life can be, who is beaten down by that so much as sagely aware of it, and who makes a raft of sensible decisions based on that awareness.
Sure, she’s as prone to doubts and emotional panic as the rest of us, and it’s those scenes that beautifully humanise Nora still further, but far from being a damsel in distress, she’s simply a mother and breadwinner determined to make life work on her terms and if love comes along as well, great but it’s not the sum total of who she is or who she’ll be.
Don’t get the impression though that Nora Goes Off Script doesn’t bare its rom-com soul with heartstoppingly wonderful fervour and a sense that a fairytale new life – fairytale in the sense that it defies the odds and exists in contravention of every last shred of reality that says it should not – is in the offing.
It does, and it is quite envelopingly lovely as Nora, who has poured her pain and anger over her empty, pointless marriage – she doesn’t regret Ben leaving so much as arriving into her life in the first place – into a script that’s turned into a movie, partly filmed on her property where she meets the initially quirky, not-good-at-real-life A-list movie star Leo Vance.
Leo loves watching the sunrise with Nora on the deck of her house and going shopping for normal things like groceries and books, and after filming stops, he decides to stay on, quickly connecting with Nora and her kids in ways that are fantastically delightful and very grounded because Leo actually enters the marrow of their lives and sticks around anyway.
It’s Nora Goes Off Script ability to mix the escapist and the everyday which makes it such a substantially different and emotionally rich addition to the rom-com genre.
We essentially have our romantic cake and a chance to eat it too in ways that are thoughtful and real and which burnish the lustre of the love that grows unexpectedly between Leo and Nora because it actually has a palpable sense of reality to it.
I get up from my table in the tea house and sit on the day-bed. ‘And it’s not you,’ I say out loud. It feels good, this rebuke. I imagine the sting on his face. The surprise that I would have moved on, me in my little life. ‘And it’s not you,’ I say again and start to cry, because of course it’s not true. (P. 179)
So, far from pricking the balloon of rom-com confection, Nora Goes Off Script actually uses a beautifully grounded protagonist, possessed of a strong sense of self and an unwillingness to be fooled by the conventions of the genre because she lives and breathes them in her day-to-day working life, to make it feel even fuller, more possible and infinitely more rewarding.
It’s funny, replete with catchy, well-written dialogue and moments that tip their hat to the tropes and clichés of the genre but are in no way captive to them – it’s not an easy feat to pull off but Monaghan manages it effortlessly – and a strong sense that here is a woman who wants to forge a connection and be unconditionally loved but will do just fine if that doesn’t happen.
Well, that’s not strictly speaking completely true, as the inevitable kink in the road to romance demonstrates all too graphically and again with a sense of truthfulness, even if it pivots on an instigating moment that is one of the very few parts of Nora Goes Off Script that feels a little contrived and silly (even if there is some emotional truth behind it), but overall Nora has learnt to stand on her own two feet and will be just fine whatever happens (once the tears stop anyway).
Nora Goes Off Script is one of those books that you walk away with a tangible shift in your emotional state, its escapistly light emotional buoyancy surviving far longer than the usual fluffy rom-com euphoria because Nora feels real, her life just as much so and her romance too, with Leo turning out just what her life doctor ordered.
It all results in a love story that makes you sigh at the possibilities of romance, glory in how substantial and far from cardboard cutout Nora and Leo feel – which makes their romance feel far more muscularly real too – and reassured that love can find you anywhere, even in the midst of the bowels of every day life where Cupid does not normally deign to show his romantically heady face