Collins, James: Beginner's Greek

Little, Brown © 2008, 448 pages

Note: Review copy received from publisher. Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

The movie would star John Cusack, of course, or a John Cusack type, somebody who could play the decent guy romantic lead, who's not usually assertive but is given to delivering monologues that reveal the intellect beneath his self-effacement. We
want him to get the girl--and this being a romantic comedy he probably will, but not without a lot of trouble along the way. The female lead, meanwhile, is some perfect vessel of femininity, shimmering in the simplicity of a cardigan and blue jeans, a latter-day Grace Kelly. She sits down next to him on a plane. They approach one another shyly. And before ten minutes have passed they're both desperately in love, though they can't admit to that yet. The universe has aligned just so across millennia so that these two people, so clearly perfect for one another, should meet, and arrange to meet again. She gives him her number on a piece of paper torn from her novel. but it's a fragile piece of documentation, as it turns out, easily lost....

Thus the back story of Peter and Holly, the winning leads of James Collins' debut novel Beginner's Greek. The rest of the novel relates the various obstacles that fate has coughed up to interfere with the couple's ultimate happiness. It's a quick read, though it bogs down a bit in parts when the author provides too much background information about a handful of minor characters. In the end, everything ties up neatly, which is to say that all the subplots are all resolved, and no loose ends are left. It's a sweet story, sweetly told.

Comments

[ncbookbunch]

1.

John Cusack was already in Serendipity - story premise is almost the same as Beginner's Greek.