Dear Bookworms,
I’ve been hearing a lot recently about the author Rainbow Rowell. She has written several books that have made quite a splash among the readers that I know. So I set out to discover why. I began with Eleanor & Park, (the book club book for the month of May here at The Write Teachers’ Close Reads Café) and continued on to read Attachments most recently. While I could spend a good while discussing both, I’ll defer to the book club discussion on Eleanor & Park, and focus here on Attachments.
Attachments tells the story of a young man, Lincoln O’Neill, whose job is to read and monitor employee e-mail for any signs of misuse of the company technology, and how this draws him unobserved into the relationship of two women who use e-mail as the primary medium of their friendship. It is difficult to get very far in a discussion of this book without addressing the dynamic between the two ladies in the story. Plenty of novels include themes of friendship, some as the purpose of the story and others as background for it, but in Attachments, Rowell uses it as the setting.
In a way, Jennifer and Beth’s relationship provides the environment in which Lincoln finds himself. Their interaction is a flawless representation of female friendship. The exchange between these two captures the way close friends interact with an accuracy that immediately draws you into it. Any woman with at least one good friend will recognize the sounds of friendship in the communication between these ladies, which includes the honesty, the self-deprecation and the pure silliness of people who are not fearful of how they will seem to each other. Reading their e-mails makes you feel like you are the third member of this friendship.
Rowell also does a fantastic job depicting other relationships in realistic ways, like the familiar familial strain between a mother and daughter with very different personalities and the effects of a strong-willed young woman on a timid and confused young man.
Surprisingly for an author with such grasp over the presentation of interaction, however, I cannot help but feel that characterization was somewhat lacking. Primarily, Lincoln is a difficult personality to accept. Reticent and socially clumsy, he is an awkward hero who lacks confidence and does not know his own mind, while his connection to the women he is drawn to remains tenuous at best. Other characters too behave in confusing or seemingly inconsistent ways.
Even with that opinion, however, I would highly recommend this book. The vibrancy of the relationships far outweighs any other consideration when deciding if this is a worthwhile read. As she continues to write, I look forward to seeing Rowell’s characters as dynamically developed as the relationships they depict.
What are your thoughts? Leave your comments below!
Keep reading!
Live, Love, Learn
Elise and The Write Teacher(s)