A little love, A little laugh
Imagine Me and You
by Billy Mernit
Shaey Areheart Books, 2008
I like my fiction dark and my movies light. When I read, I prefer to ponder subtexts and wallow in poetic turns of phrase, when I watch a movie, I want unadulterated entertainment. No surprise then that romantic comedies dominate our DVD shelves. But what to do with a book that is a romantic comedy? Romantic-comedic novels with female protagonists all seem to have been lumped into that horribly-named genre chicklit, while novels with male protagonists seem to be left with the romantic comedy banner hanging over their heads. (Personally, I think men have the better end of that deal.) Let’s face it -- romantic comedies with male protagonists are a rare breed. And it’s hard enough to get men to go see a romantic comedy in the movie theaters, never mind get them to read one. Nick Hornby helped turn this problem around with the clever idea of bringing soccer into the plot of his romantic comedy Fever Pitch; he managed to hook a male reading audience into a primarily female-dominated genre. So, not only must the writer of a romantic comedy with a male protagonist achieve the perfect balance of comedic plot lines, unique and engaging characters, and snappy dialogue, but also he needs to do it without antagonizing the women who will be the predominant readers of his novel.
Billy Mernit has stepped up to the plate to take a swing at this hard curving ball with his debut romantic comedy, Imagine Me and You. And a good at-bat it is. Though this is Mernit’s first novel, he is the author of a book on how to write romantic comedies and, to date, has had what sounds like a successful writing career in this genre in movies and television. I had a brief oh-no moment when I saw the academic definitions of each chapter heading, but once I read them, I had great fun identifying the set-up from the cute meet from the complication and so on, in the movie The Holiday (which I happened to watch after I finished this book). Fiction that teaches - it’s a good thing.
The novel’s male protagonist Jordan is, not a surprise, a romantic comedy writer and teacher in the midst of a romantic crisis. His Italian wife, Isabella, has returned to Rome to ‘find herself” because somehow she lost herself while living in LA. And, of course, Isabella leaves just as Jordan needs all his wits about him to do a final re-write of a script he’s been trying to sell since landing in LA. So, as in every romantic comedy - there are a lot of woe-is-me moments with Jordan. The good news is that he’s a smart guy with some wit up his sleeve and doesn’t spend too much time feeling sorry for himself because he quickly finds a distraction by imagining a former student, Naomi, into his life to help him make Isabella jealous. Unfortunately for Jordan, Naomi takes on a life of her own and becomes the master of his script and his troubled marriage. Further complications arise when Jordan runs into the real Naomi after Isabella arrives back in LA to work out their marriage difficulties. The twists and turns this plot takes may seem chaotic and inexplicable, but they are typical of the genre. It speaks well of Mernit’s skill as a writer that he makes all this craziness plausible.
Snappy dialogue that marries wit and intelligence is a benchmark of romantic comedies. And if that dialogue also works to heighten sexual tension, then the writer has really hit a homerun. Dialogue that conveys facts may be an essential component of movie and television scripts, but dialogue in fiction does not need to carry that load (that’s why we have compressed narration). Dialogue in novels needs first and foremost to reveal characters and the conflicts and tensions between them. Too much of the dialogue in Imagine Me and You existed purely to convey plot information. For example, in the very first exchange of the novel Jordan speaks with a barmaid who we never see again; she was a character that existed only for Jordan to tell us details about his marriage. There are far too many of these moments of unnecessary and uninteresting dialogue between minor and major characters. Snappy dialogue? A definite swing and a miss.
Unique and engaging characters are few and far between in this novel. Thankfully, Jordan is a definite double - wit and sensitivity. But the women? Well, there the ball bounced off into foul territory. The extraordinary amounts of physical details about Isabella and Naomi’s beauty bordered on male teenage fantasies being played out at the expense of the reader. One more reference to the dark waves of Isabella’s hair and I was ready to tear out my own mousy brown strands; one more flicker of those wicked green Naomi eyes and I would’ve scratched them out. This speaks to the kind of overwriting that is common among early novelists and might have been helped by a better editor. Improved dialogue in all those phone conversations with Isabella or with the Naomi apparition would’ve worked wonders to bring those characters to life in a way that felt more than skin-deep.
Mernit gets a solid base hit with an RBI for this novel. He’s picked a bear of an opponent in the romantic-comedic novel, but with a little more novel-writing experience, I think he might score a few runs on Nick Hornby.
(This review was written as part of the Librarything Early Reviewers Group and is posted under the book listing for Imagine Me and You at http://www.librarything.com/work/book/29329556)