(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia)
One of the kinds of festive romcoms I love the most are where someone’s life falls apart – no, that’s not the movable; I’m not a sadist, thank you – and they flee back to their hometown in England or Ireland (this happens in U.S. settings too but for some reason it feels inexplicably cosier on the other side of the Atlantic) to find comfort with their family, friends and the lingering remains of their childhood.
It matters not that it’s the same place they left years earlier to find and establish themselves; after the horror hell of life in their promised land, usually a cold hard city where they lose their career, home and significant other in one personally apocalyptic day, going home, no matter the challenges that await them in past pain or trauma, they find comfort and love and a chance to lick their wounds and start again with unconditional love at every turn.
And, of course, the romantic interest of a local man, for it is usually a woman rushing home to the safe arms of the people and place they know, who gives their broken heart just the kind of perfect love they never really had before.
The Christmas Market by Linda McEvoy is a perfect exemplar of this festive romcom subset with protagonist Jas finally fleeing an emotionally abusive relationship in Galway, western Ireland and fleeing back to the midlands and her childhood village of Ballyeclane.
I wish I could think of a biting comeback to make it clear I know exactly who’s to blame. And I have the scars to prove it. But I’m winded, and the heel of my hand caught the tarmac and it’s stinging like hell so I’ll all out of wit.
A nascent talented designer and creator of couture hats fashioned from recycled garments, Jas arrives back in time to warm greetings from my Mam and her sister Cathy and her husband Brian and with ideas of really making a go of her fashion business.
She’s skint at the moment but luckily she can stay with her mum and work at her grandmother’s multi-storied old stone stone on the village’s atmospheric square, which also hides some lovely lanes and homes not immediately visible to anyone passing by.
It’s exactly the sort of place you would want to return to, especially too if you’re best friend Shane, who had a crush on you at one time but who swears that’s all in the past now, and you’ve just met hunky local builder Niall whose family is the closest Ballyeclane has to lords of the manor.
Not everything is ideally situated – for one thing Jas’s childhood bedroom is now a walk-in wardrobe and her granny’s home might get sold out from under it’s new hat-making tenant – but by and large, after the initial trauma of Jas experiencing a complete change of life, her chance at reinvention and healing and setting a bold new and successful course into the future is looking pretty promising.
When she’s not wondering though if Niall is really interested in her, and trying to make enough hats to get embryonic business of the ground, Jas unexpectedly finds herself organising the village’s Christmas market with not a lot of time to get it all done in time.
The biggest challenge Jas has is believing in herself.
While her Mam, Cathy, her old employer Della, onetime neighbour and glam French photographer Amélie and even Niall all extoll how beautiful her work is, and Jas has some pretty ambitious ideas about where to take things including spreads in magazine and an artistically adventurous online presence, not to mention a stall at the market she is helping to put together with a team of volunteers, who quickly become the inclusive found family she needs, Jas struggles to really keep the faith.
The Christmas Market becomes then a story of a clearly talented, bright and lovely person struggling to really go the distance when everyone around her knows she can.
Much of what propels the plot is how Jas either bolsters and advances herself, or fails to really back herself when she needs to, scarred by a past including a nasty childhood bully who quickly becomes both the Big Bad of the piece and a unifying force for those on the side of Jas.
At times, you do wonder why Jas doesn’t have more faith in herself but then you realise, if you’ve been through past trauma like that at any time in your past, that the effects of it can linger long after the initial damage is done.
Years after 13 school years of incessant bullying, this reviewer still can’t believe anyone really likes him, despite it being clear they do, including a loving partner, so the way in which McEvoy writes her central character really rings true.
I don’t know what has come as more of a shock – the fact that Lily thinks I’m gifted when I didn’t know she was aware of my hats, or the realisation that Niall’s dad actually knows my name. Maybe I’m not quite so invisible as I thought.
The one person who really needs to crack this shield of self-protection, which is long past its point of actual usefulness – as some point these protective mechanisms become more danger than protector and that’s very much what happens with Jas who must open her heart up if she is to truly move forward – is Niall, but while they became fast friends and Niall is a huge source of support to Jas, she can’t believe he is really interested in her.
To the extent that she misinterprets all kinds of signs and gets 77 when she adds up two plus two and not four; while McEvoy does perhaps string this out a little too long for the good of her character who is smarter than she is allowed to be, by and large The Christmas Market does a beautifully evocative job of exploring what it’s like when all kinds of love and newness and hope is beckoning but you can’t quite let go of the trauma of the past.
As festive romcoms go, The Christmas Market is a delight, a reminder that what we once fled might become the sanctuary we need, and that all our grand visions of a life beyond our childhood envisions might get tossed around years down the track when we have to find safety back where it all began and realise that maybe home is where we needed to be all along if we are to truly flourish, grow, and of course, love.