(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia)
Ever since 1993’s Groundhog Day made time loops a popular mainstream storytelling device, busting it out of the realm of sci-fi where it had been happily resident for some time, they have become a great way of someone being forced to confront the stagnant state of their life or a prevailing issue that needs resolving but which is stymied by the ceaseless onward rush of time.
Time loops function like a pause on the busyness of life and given the person at their centre, who move from freaked out to realising here is a rare chance to fix all the stuff that’s broke and to indulge the pursuit of various solutions with zero consequences since all the damage done in one day resets by the next when the same 24 hours start all over again.
The Christmas Wish by Lindsey Kelk embraces this narrative device with festive gusto, serving up a story which comes with generous servings of raw emotionalism, buoyant humour and the kind of fairytale ending which books of the Christmas genre must always feature because redemptive arcs are, almost always, the order of the day.
At its heart, it has one of the most memorable protagonists this reviewer has come across in some time.
Gwen Baker is not having a great time of it; while she is close to her cousin/adoptive brother Manny, a flamboyantly fun gay man with some real wounds from his past, her relationships with the rest of the family including her mum and dad and sister Cerys are tenuous at best and operate on a fairly surfacy levels that depends heavily on Gwen being the compliantly good girl she has always been.
‘Go on then, since it’s Christmas.’ I [Gwen to Manny] peered up the chimney, just in case. No sign of red trousers, shiny boots or a sack full of toys. ‘Besides, it isn’t as though anything legitimately catastrophic can happen, is it? Christmas is only one day. How bad could it possibly be?’
But Gwen is not the golden child she has always been supposed to be.
She is newly single – not by choice; her scumbag of an ex, Michael, had an affair and ran off, clichés fully embraced with any apology, with his receptionist – and her superstar job as a lawyer and almost partner at a prestigious top tier London law firm is hanging in the balance.
While the family know about the former, they know nothing about the latter which, in a family of lawyers where Gwen has risen to the absolute top career-wise, would go off like an incendiary device of truth that no one is prepared to deal with even a little bit.
So, as Manny and Gwen drive up north, way up north, from their homes in London, at the start of The Christmas Wish, it is crystal clear that Gwen is not doing well, she has no real way forward and that maybe, just maybe, though she can’t admit this to herself, she might need to do some real soul searching.
But who has time for that, especially at Christmas when there are walks to be had through the snowy countryside, huge amounts of Yorkshire pudding and roasts to be consumed, and a Christmas pudding to be consumed by a family long past having a taste for it?
(courtesy official Lindsey Kelk author site)
Enter the time loop.
How it came about is a subject of some real ingenuity which goes to the heart of the family’s most sacred Christmas Day tradition, but suffice to say, that whatever it’s origin, Gwen’s trapped in a time loop which can only be escaped if she lays her heart bare to her mum and dad, her prickly sister Cerys and to Manny and her outrageously fun, tells-it-like-it-is Nan.
Complicating an already complicated situation but in the best possible way is the presence of next door neighbour Dev, a hunky, kind, culinarily talented doctor who grew up alongside Gwen and Manny particularly, and about whom Gwen has a long and lingering romantic fantasy.
While being stuck in a time loop, where she relives Christmas Day is no fun, especially with a family who eventually break up in arguments and recriminations somewhere around dessert, getting to hang out with Dev is a delight, with illicit pool swimming, kisses and a pub catch-up all making the repetitive nature of her new existence a lot easier to handle.
The Christmas Wish is all about Gwen finding herself all over again in the relative peace and quiet of the time loop, which is a rest area of sorts, freaky though it is, from the pell-mell non-reflective chaos of everyday life, and that includes finally realising she is in love with Dev and maybe he’s in love with her too?
A girl can hope, right?
Getting stuck in an eternal Christmas until I could solve my family’s problems was one thing, but forcing me to reflect on my own life was quite another.
Enough was enough, it was time to figure this thing out.
The joy of The Christmas Wish is that it seamlessly brings together a festive romcom, a family that needs sorting out and an existential crisis which definitely needs resolving into one hugely enjoyable package, and while everyone forgets day-to-day what happened in the time loop and the life-changing heart-to-hearts they have with Gwen, she changes, quite substantially in fact, and you suspect there is some sort of subconscious psychic memory that lingers for Dev, Cerys, Manny etc because little bit by little bit all of the family and those in their orbit change too.
It’s almost A Christmas Carol in the changes wrought but without ghosts visiting through the night, with Gwen coming to grips with who she really is, what she really wants from life and, most importantly for the romantics among us, who she wants in the lead role alongside her.
Filled with brilliantly written, heartfelt and bubblingly funny and super smart dialogue, characters who are fully and pleasingly realised and an incisive thoughtful grasp on what it means to be human and how we often get it so wrong when we want it to be so right, The Christmas Wish is a true festive delight.
The Christmas Wish one of the best time loop tales I have read in a good long while, using the advantages of the plot device to give Gwen breathing and thinking and feeling space, uncluttered by the messy busyness of everyday life, and to completely remake her life in ways that really matter and which happily for those of us who love and believe in the redemptive power of the most wonderful time of the year, last well beyond the season into a much happier year and life ahead.