This isn’t the first review of Rainbow Rowell’s new novel, Landline, and I know it won’t be the last. People around here seem to dig her writing, and with good reason. She knows how to twist words that get you in the gut and I’ve never read anyone who describes the first flush of love the way this woman does. Normally when I finish a book, I take some time to process it, but with this one I’m just diving in. Landline was waiting in my mailbox for me when I got home three and a half hours ago. I closed it about twenty minutes ago. It’s the kind of book you don’t want to put down and you don’t want to end. Once again, Rowell has created a world I want to dive into and live in for awhile. I could tell you about how well-written the book is, how it has some flaws, but how overall it’s one of the best things I’ve read all year. I won’t, though, because you probably already know that. I’m going to tell you something else instead.
You don’t know when you’re twenty-three.
You don’t know what it really means to crawl into someone else’s life and stay there. You can’t see all the ways you’re going to get tangled, how you’re going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten–in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems.
She didn’t know that at twenty-three.
I was twenty-two when I got married. College sweetheart. I was young, sometimes I think I was too young. Fast forward and this year we’ll be celebrating our tenth anniversary. There were parts of this book that had me openly weeping (thank God Mr. ModernLove works late) because they were so real to me. At 22 or 23, you’re not a fully formed person. You still have so much to figure out and so far to go. When you attach yourself to someone else at that age, you either do it together or you do it apart. I was an idiot kid then who screwed up more than my fair share of times. There was a lot I wasn’t ready for and this book explores that in such a clear, exquisite way. How it’s so much about work, about trusting that the other person isn’t going to give up on you. Love can only take you so far and the rest you have to do yourselves. Rowell nails everything about relationships, about how we want to change ourselves sometimes, about how hard it can be to accept those things about us. I can’t write a review of this as a book because it would be like writing a review of my life. It all just hits too close to home, but in such a good way.
Landline is a rare book. It’s rare, it’s beautiful, and if you’ve ever been in love, it’s a book that you’ll understand.
I hadn’t even thought about it, but I suspect I too was moved so much by this book because while I didn’t marry my husband at 21, I met him then, and in November, we’ll have been together for fourteen years, and married for six and a half. We’ve spent a third of our lives together and grown into the people we now are together.
As I said in my comment to Travis, if I’d read this book a few years ago, when our marriage was going through a real rough patch, this book would have completely destroyed me. Seriously, with this, and Fangirl, Rowell has written two books that speak so profoundly to me, that are a bit like twisted mirrors of my own experience. She just captures people, feelings and just life so well. I still haven’t been able to finish my own review, I should probably save the rest of my feels for that. :)
Oh, God. I can’t even imagine reading this when I was 25 or 26 and still figuring out who I was, both in terms of an individual and as a wife This book would have destroyed me from the inside out because I see myself so much in Georgie. My husband is the one who takes care of things, the one who keeps the world from falling apart, who always seems to know what to do. I get that feeling about Neal as well, the one who keeps it together while Georgie is off figuring out her dreams. To read this back then, before we had figured it out, would have ripped me apart.
Oh, I’m absolutely the Neal in our relationship. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel deeply for Georgie, though. I always feel so deeply for Rowell’s characters, because they are all so real. Even when I don’t like them all that much (Wren, I’m looking at you!), I feel strongly.
At this point I just trust her so much as an author. I’d read anything she put out.
See, your review and a couple of other people’s reviews have me worried that I won’t love this one as much as her others. I’m not married. I’m not even in a serious relationship. And part of the reason I loved Attachments and Fangirl so much was that they spoke to me.
I feel like this is probably going to be an Eleanor and Park situation, where it’s really really good, but it doesn’t get under my skin. But I hope not. I like the skin-worming books the best.
I don’t know. A good friend of mine, who isn’t married and who, as long as I’ve known her, hasn’t had a serious relationship, read and loved this book as well. We haven’t talked about it yet, but she did talk about all the feelings she got from it. I think Rowell is that talented of a writer that even if you haven’t experienced it, she’ll still make you feel it deeply.
Well, that makes me feel better. I probably wouldn’t even be having these thoughts except Amazon only shipped my book TODAY even though I’ve had it pre-ordered since October. I should have had this thing long read by now and I still have to wait who knows how long for them to get it to me.
Oh, Amazon. So useless. I pre-ordered it the day before it came out and it still took a week to get. This is why I buy ebooks!
I really hope you enjoy it. Even if you don’t connect to it on the same level someone who’s married does, I think it’s still a remarkable book.
I had no problems with Amazon. Got it the day of release using two-day shipping. *shrugs*
See, Eleanor and Park didn’t SPEAK to me directly as much as Attachments (the e-mails between Beth and Jennifer reminded me so much of the letters my best friend and I used to write to each other), Fangirl (I too was a socially awkward, nerdy girl who felt deeply out of my depths during my first year of college. My best friend Lydia was probably my Reagan. We didn’t actually share a room, but we lived down the hall from each other) and now Landline. But I still felt like I lived in the pages of the book until it let me go, and she makes me FEEL so much.
All Rainbow Rowell’s books are worth reading.
Yes, they are. She is the best.