(courtesy Text Publishing)
In a world full of hatred, bigotry, violent attacks and simmering intimidation, and that’s on the good days, having somewhere to escape to that also feels like it might just exist in the real world too is an incalculable joy.
While romcoms get a lot of stick from some quarters where they are viewed as fluff and nonsense with no discernible life value or emotional weight, the truth that they, and the good and great ones in particular (for, yes, not all romcoms are created equally), offer very real succour, a chance to believe in a world where you can fall in love with an enemy or a romantic impersonation scheme to make others happy becomes the real thing.
Some of you may say it’s all very silly, but for those of who love the genre, they are witty, bouncy, zestful snapshots of the kinds of lives we could live if only the real world smiled more sweetly upon us; and even for those of us who do have rather wonderful relationships (shoutout to my partner Steve who is everything I ever dreamed of), it’s comforting to be reminded of how good love can be when some part of our day-to-day life or just the world in which we live, feels like a nightmarishly uncaring dumpster fire with no redeeming features and no means of escape.
Books like People Skills by Nina Kenwood (It Sounded Better in my Head, Unnecessary Drama) are actually necessary counterweights to life’s darker moments, and honestly they should be valued far more than they are.
Oh okay, there’s a roiling mass of post-break-up anxiety under that smooth exterior. Welcome to rock bottom, buddy. I’ve been there. I can show you the way out.
For a start, People Skills is smartly written, a comedically rich tour de force full of Ephron-level oneliners and witty retorts that very few of us are capable of in real life but which if we were, would make us feel like we were in the middle of a classic Hollywood romcom with the likes of Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, or going further back, Audrey Hepburn or Cary Grant.
That’s not a bad way to feel at all.
But beyond all the whip-smart, hilariously clever dialogue, and People Skills is gloriously and endlessly satisfyingly full of it, there lies real meaning and emotional connection at play.
The two central characters in the novel, Charlotte and Xavier, are presented as real people with actual life issues who are not in any way, shape or form ready for any kind of romantic entanglement, even if their souls are aching for some sort of release from the emotional deserts in which they find themselves.
Sure, their backstories are overplayed for dramatic effect but that’s hardly a crime in literature of any stripe where drama is always heightened to drive a plot and make an emotional impact; what matters here is that they come across as people who have been through the ringer, Charlotte in particular, and who deserve the kind of break that any character in a romcom gets and which we embrace with alacrity and an eagerness to see happiness triumph over grief.
(courtesy offical author site)
Charlotte, who really is the focus of People Skills, has moved to a small coastal town two hours out of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia) to escape a complete meltdown of her life, none of it her fault.
A once-treasured work relationship with an older man at the prestigious publishing house where she works as a book editor has gone south through no action of her own, and the lies spun by the wolf in sheep’s clothing she thought was her forever guy have also cost her her job, forcing her to relocate somewhere far from home where she works as an executive assistant to Hillary Hobbs, a media personality who is using the later stages of her career to launch a literary festival in her hometown.
It’s a step down skills-wise but a step up pay wise and Charlotte is excelling at it, finding she gets on with Hillary and her sometimes mercurial moods beautifully and that she has a knack for making Hillary’s world work in ways that might be exhausting at times but which provide a weird kind of enduring satisfaction.
Into this fragile new existence – it might be going well but after past events, Charlotte is not taking anything for granted – comes Xavier, Hillary’s youngest child, once regarded as a wunderkind of Australian literature but now viewed as something of a one-hit wonder after his second adventurously experimental novel tanked and he found himself trapped in four long years of dispiriting writer’s block.
I follow her into the hall, and it’s only in this moment I realise I have been tightly clutching Xavier’s manuscript this whole time.
In a fit of impromptu WTF-ness, Charlotte offers Xavier, recently broken up from his beautiful influencer girlfriend whom Hillary adores, not only the spare room in her rental but a chance to write by putting him through her writer’s block-busting program which, rather hilariously, she is yet to create (or which she makes up one the spot and while a gently incredulous Xavier suspects she’s making it all up, he goes along with it anyway).
The rest is pretty much romcom standard, story high points at least, but do not for a second think that all the box ticking of the well-worn genres tropes and cliches makes People Skills even remotely a run of the mill work.
Around all the much-loved building blocks of a romcom, Kenwood weaves real humanity, vibrant humour, dialogue that bounces of the walls with vigour and hilarity and the sort of meaningful connection we all want, and which while it might have an escapsit air to it in People Skills, feels very real and grounded and life-savingly necessary.
That’s the great strength of People Skills – it has all the romance and possibility and hope you read the genre for, all of it presented with originality, verve, wit and a great sense of fun, but it also feels very grounded and human and real and that means that while it offers you the escape from reality you’re craving, it also feels like it could all exist in the real world and that, my friends, makes it feel the kind of comfort that has emotionality muscularity and heartfelt presence, the kind that makes the day-to-day better and which lasts well beyond the last perfectly judged, heart-swellingly lovely page.