Like everyone else out there I loved Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park (2013) and knew that I would want to read whatever else she produced. Then you get on with life and read a bazillion other authors because you have a pile to read. Then fast forward into my Christmas break and I came upon review or an online conversation about Rowell’s book Landline and how it takes place leading right up to Christmas. And just like that Rainbow was back in my life.
I need to keep up more as she is quite a prolific writer; four books in basically two years. Wow.
Landline (2014) is an amazing story of Georgie McCool, a television scriptwriter who has a major writing opportunity right before Christmas. In order to accept the gig with her hip writing partner, Seth, they have to put together several scripts over the holiday! This is a chance of a lifetime, Georgie tells her husband Neal. Neal, though, chooses to travel to his mom’s house in Omaha on his own with their two daughters, Namoi and Alice. She can’t believe he does but he does it and while she feels a little abandoned she puts in long hours with Seth working on the show.
The first few nights she can’t face going back to their house on her own she finds reasons to end up at her mom’s house. It is here in her childhood room where she fishes out an old rotary phone to call Neal one night. She has cell phone problems and it’s easier than going home for the charger. The phone makes a call to the past and she ends up talking to a young Neal, a college-age Neal. And the conversations are so wonderful that she gets pulled back to that time herself as they chat and flirt and remember all that was good.
A quote:
“Hi Mrs. Grafton,” Georgie said.
“Yes?”
“It’s Georgie.”
“Oh hi, Georgie. Neal’s still asleep. He must have been up pretty late. Do you want him to call you back?”
“No. I mean, just tell him I’ll call later. Actually, I already told him I’d call later. But-I was going to ask him something.” She couldn’t ask about the president; that would seem mental…”Do you happen to know who the Speaker of the House is?”
Neal’s mom hummed. “It’s Newt Gingrich, isn’t it? Did it change?”
“No,” Georgie siad. “I think that’s right. His name was at the tip of my tongue.” She leaned closer to the base of the phone. “Thanks. Um bye. Thanks.” She dropped the receiver onto the hook and stood up suddenly, taking a few steps away.
Then she dropped to her knees and crawled under the bed, reading for the telephone outlet and unclicking the plug. She pulled the cord away, then backed out from the bed and crawled to the opposite wall staring at the nightstand.
She had to deal with this.
It was still happening. (108)
If you haven’t picked this one up please do. I now have to wrestle Fangirl from my librarian friend Denise’s hands.
Peaceful Reader 