So why exactly is "Funny Valentine" the most idiotic book title of all times.
I am reading a book. Yeah a real book, no fanfiction (ok, that too:), nothing that ends on ics or logy and absolutely nothing scientific. Well, I read this book already three times and I am writing by BT about it so I practicaly know it by hearth but I fell again under its spell.
Funny Valentine by Amy Jenkins is a chick lit book, yes a chick lit, very different from my usual reading list but me, the analistic person, found there a wonderful psychologic subtelty. And I just love Stevie, reading it again I found myself finding more and more things that we have in commom and maybe, a small maybe, she is actually a person responsible for my opinions on love and realionships. Well, this needs some investigation.
I am not certainly apalled by the plot, a journalist falling for a film star sounds terribly cheesy and in a way, it is. But the main heroine makes it all better. Stevie Dunlop is a journalist with principles which is a very bad quality for this job. She wants to write about exploration of flower pickers not write about Luis Plantagenet, a famous hollywood star. But in the end, because of a pregnant friend and unpaid bills she agrees to spend a week with him.
The book is written from in first person, by Stevie´s POV which makes it so exeptional. You see all her feeling written down, you see signs, you see her strange thinking (very similar to mine).
"But they are pictoresque, the daffodils. I want to pull them up and put them in a box and have them for ever - but not them, in fact, rather the feeling they bring. But it wouldn´t work, of course - in a box. I look at the daffodils again and try to recepture the feeling. I´m straining for it now. Doesn´t work. I give up - fuck the daffodils - and walk on."
Stevie had a very complicated childhood, abandonded by her mother, raised by her eccentric grandma, Stevie grew up with this idea of love, actually, without one. She doesn´t believe in love, in marriage. She is also making strange choices based on nothing, she does something and later doesn´t know why she did it. And those feelings. Well...
"I walk all the way to the far gate with an unmistakable sense of life slipping away. It´s not a nice feeling. It´s a vrey fearful feeling - an ice cube sliding through my guts, melting slowly in my belly. Here I have an opportunity and I´m letting it slip, slip, slip away. I´m always wishing life would be more surprising, would take more unexpected twists and turns - and yet, if I´m not careful, I find myself taking the easy road."
Exactly my feelings after the whole school fiasco.
Stevie is the best thing in the book, the second is her relationship with Luis. I must say I don´t like Luis so much, his reasong is often very strange and his clinging to the "ordinary" I found really pathetic but what he builds with Stevie through the whole book makes him lovable. You can´t say they have a typical love story. Everything they share is hidden, subtle and the author skips the parts when actually something could happen. It´s like she wants us to wonder exactly like Luis´ fans. Did something happen between them on the trip? We don´t know. We know what Stevie feels even when she never voices it. The only indication what was or better said wasn´t is in her talk with her boss.
"Just tell me you at least slept with him"
"I didn´t actually."
"For God´s sake."
"What?"
"Tell me you´re going to."
There are no romantic revelations, the only time there is a kiss it is described in very practical "after we´ve kissed". And if there is a happyend? I am not going to tell you;)
On a way, all this subtelty and hiding is very logical and coresponds with Stevie´s idea of love. She sees is just as a chemical reaction, a need to mate, not to be alone. She hates the idea of nuclear family, marriage is to Stevie a tool of capitalistic society and that´s probably the reason for her denial toward her feelings.
So and here I probably found all my ideas about love, even when I wasn´t aware of it, funny, isn´t it?
Funny Valentine by Amy Jenkins is a chick lit book, yes a chick lit, very different from my usual reading list but me, the analistic person, found there a wonderful psychologic subtelty. And I just love Stevie, reading it again I found myself finding more and more things that we have in commom and maybe, a small maybe, she is actually a person responsible for my opinions on love and realionships. Well, this needs some investigation.
I am not certainly apalled by the plot, a journalist falling for a film star sounds terribly cheesy and in a way, it is. But the main heroine makes it all better. Stevie Dunlop is a journalist with principles which is a very bad quality for this job. She wants to write about exploration of flower pickers not write about Luis Plantagenet, a famous hollywood star. But in the end, because of a pregnant friend and unpaid bills she agrees to spend a week with him.
The book is written from in first person, by Stevie´s POV which makes it so exeptional. You see all her feeling written down, you see signs, you see her strange thinking (very similar to mine).
"But they are pictoresque, the daffodils. I want to pull them up and put them in a box and have them for ever - but not them, in fact, rather the feeling they bring. But it wouldn´t work, of course - in a box. I look at the daffodils again and try to recepture the feeling. I´m straining for it now. Doesn´t work. I give up - fuck the daffodils - and walk on."
Stevie had a very complicated childhood, abandonded by her mother, raised by her eccentric grandma, Stevie grew up with this idea of love, actually, without one. She doesn´t believe in love, in marriage. She is also making strange choices based on nothing, she does something and later doesn´t know why she did it. And those feelings. Well...
"I walk all the way to the far gate with an unmistakable sense of life slipping away. It´s not a nice feeling. It´s a vrey fearful feeling - an ice cube sliding through my guts, melting slowly in my belly. Here I have an opportunity and I´m letting it slip, slip, slip away. I´m always wishing life would be more surprising, would take more unexpected twists and turns - and yet, if I´m not careful, I find myself taking the easy road."
Exactly my feelings after the whole school fiasco.
Stevie is the best thing in the book, the second is her relationship with Luis. I must say I don´t like Luis so much, his reasong is often very strange and his clinging to the "ordinary" I found really pathetic but what he builds with Stevie through the whole book makes him lovable. You can´t say they have a typical love story. Everything they share is hidden, subtle and the author skips the parts when actually something could happen. It´s like she wants us to wonder exactly like Luis´ fans. Did something happen between them on the trip? We don´t know. We know what Stevie feels even when she never voices it. The only indication what was or better said wasn´t is in her talk with her boss.
"Just tell me you at least slept with him"
"I didn´t actually."
"For God´s sake."
"What?"
"Tell me you´re going to."
There are no romantic revelations, the only time there is a kiss it is described in very practical "after we´ve kissed". And if there is a happyend? I am not going to tell you;)
On a way, all this subtelty and hiding is very logical and coresponds with Stevie´s idea of love. She sees is just as a chemical reaction, a need to mate, not to be alone. She hates the idea of nuclear family, marriage is to Stevie a tool of capitalistic society and that´s probably the reason for her denial toward her feelings.
So and here I probably found all my ideas about love, even when I wasn´t aware of it, funny, isn´t it?