Reading a romantic comedy is an almost sure-fire way to feel better about the world.
What felt bleak now has hues of hope and vital possibility and that lingering sense you have that nothing good can come of this messy business of living suddenly feels faintly ridiculous.
I mean, look at all the rich and wonderful things that the average rom-com contains and it’s near impossible to stay anchored in the worst parts of being human (not completely impossible since nothing in life is that assured but it’s close enough that walking away from the blue, at least for the time you rad the story is more possible than not).
The delightfully prosaically-named new novel from Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy, more than earns its soul restorative stripes, following in many ways a fairly conventional rom-com storytelling route but with so much intelligently rich humanity and sprightly insightful humour that it feels the freshest, most original novel of the genre to come along in some time.
Driven by the fiercely articulated idea that ordinary-looking men can snag glamorous partners of the opposite sex but the reverse never happens for women, Romantic Comedy all but then predestines itself to break that rule, dreamt up by comic writer protagonist, Sally Milz, who has witnessed a series of male colleagues, including a close friend, meet and get together with women far above their station.
Noah had turned back in Autumn’s direction but once again looked at me. ‘Do you need a ride home?’
Was he joking? I said, “Oh, I stay here on Tuesdays,’ and Autumn laughed and said, ‘I’ll bet Sally’s night is just beginning.’
Noah stood then and said, ‘ Thanks again. I really appreciate it.’
Christening it the Danny Horst Rule after her fellow writer and performer who has just met and got together with a Hollywood actress on the rise, Milz channels her considerable annoyance at this double standard into one of the sketches she writes for a comedy show called The Night Owls, which is, in everything but name, a homage to Saturday Night Live.
Her sketches are known for making sharp-edged points with humour and meaningful intensity, and this one is no different, her way of grappling with the fact that Danny’s found an actress but at 3, her chances of finding someone of similar fame and fortune on the male side of the equation are remotely and receding in possibility every day.
And then, she meets Noah Brewster, a hugely popular pop singer of some twenty years standing who is the show’s celebrity guest in the very same week her sketch is picked to feature, meaning that, in common with all their weekly celebrity hosts, Noah must be across what all the various pieces he’s introducing or appearing in mean.
Connecting over this and a rewrite of a sketch Noah has written self-depracatingly skewering an aspect of his own career, Sally has to confront the idea that maybe she is attractive to someone like Noah and is about to blow her own sacredly-held rule out of the comedic water.
As noted, a lot of the basic narrative touchpoints of the novel won’t really surprise anyone who reads the book.
That’s not a criticism even in the slightest; every rom-com has a time-honoured requirment to include certain tropes and clichés, and Romantic Comedy is no different, embracing a rather authentically rich and wholly enjoyable meet cute where Sally uses her superior writing skills to zhoush Noah’s sketch, the inevitable schisming of that unexpected connection, and a coming back together that adds all that heartwarmingly lovely rom back into the com from which it has been stripped.
What really marks the novel as something truly special is how beautifully and thoughtfully Sittenfeld brings the character of Sally to life, and indeed that of Noah, Danny and a bunch of other key people that really make the story emotionally zing, all of them adding immensely to a story with real humanistic weight and meaning which still manages to feel buoyant and happily exciting.
Sittenfeld writes with a masterful ability to seamlessly balance the upbeat and the self-sabotagingly downbeat and to have them feel like natural halves of the same pleasing whole.
Sally comes across at all times like a real person who feels all the thing you would feel when you meet someone who breaks your world apart in the best and most necessarily refreshing of ways, and is more than a little bit thrilled by all unexpectedly gooey feelings coursing her New York City-hardened veins, but who can’t quite wrap her head around the fact that she might just have found her person.
He [Noah] added, ‘Can I call you again tomorrow night?’
‘You definitely can,’ I [Sally] said.
‘Can I email you seven times before I call you tomorrow night?’
‘I’m hoping you will.’
She is convinced for much of Romantic Comedy that no one would really want her, and she challenges Noah time and again to almost validate how he feels.
Her unwillingness, or rather inability, to simply fall head over heels in love and be done with that makes her feels so authentically, charmingly relatable in a smartly-written way that most rom-com protagonists simply don’t manage.
Brought alive by whip-smart dialogue and clever storytelling that brims with real insight and compassion for the potholes of the human condition, Romantic Comedy is that rare rom-cm that feels it could actually take place in the real world (a sensation bolstered by it being set in part over the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020).
No matter what tropes or clichés in play at a given time, the novel always feel anchored by some very human insight and writing that always calls out the obvious romantic elephant in the room and handles it in a way that a real person, full of flaws and self doubt as much as they brim with talent and vibrant competency, likely would.
It all feels so deliciously grounded, a mix of romantic vim and vigour and cognizance about how our lives rarely track like a rom-com script, and in so doing, it fills you with a buoyantly alive sense that no matter how dark things feel at times and how much we doubt our ability to live life the way we want to, that affairs of the heart can happen in the real world, and with as much humour and compassionate self-awareness as fairytale rom-coms convey, a shot in the arm of romantic hope that makes Romantic Comedy an absolute joy and pleasure to read.