A Little "Something Borrowed" About Love Triangles

I'll own it: I read a lot of YA and chick lit.  Regarding the former, I'll descend into Hipsterville and say I was devouring teen books way before Twilight blew up (just ask my ex, who thought it was really funny to follow me into that section at Borders).  And as for the latter, I'll be a bad feminist for a second and say that I think the cutesified term for women's fiction is, well, cute.  And unlike the early 2000's, chick lit (or women's fiction, if you're a good feminist) is less all about men and shoes and more about real women dealing with real issues.

Such as falling in love with the last person you're supposed to.

The love triangle is a tale as old as time and one frequently visited in YA, chick lit, and romance (another genre I adore).  The thing about the love triangle?  It is very, very hard to write.  Sure, the stakes are really high (something I constantly struggle with in my own fiction), but how do you NOT make everyone seem like assholes?  You've got the girl who's crossing a major boundary (person/point one), often at the expense of her friend who in lesser love-triangle stories is portrayed as a cartoonish meanie (person/point two), with a guy they may both be better off without (person/point three).

See what I mean?  The potential for a crappy story where the reader hates everyone and ends up throwing the book across the room (um, not that I've ever done this, Chicago Public Library, I swear) is huge.

Last year I reviewed Something Like Fate, a YA love-triangle story by the darling Susane Colasanti (whose new book, So Much Closer, just came out last week).  I won't rehash the whole review here, but this was a love triangle done right.  The friendship between the two girls was believable.  The boy was simply awesome, if a bit idealized (but hey, who didn't idealize a boy in high school?  If you're like me and grew up surrounded by asshole jocks, it was hard not to put the nice guys on a pedestal).  The sense of "this is so wrong yet so very right" was palpable.  Also?  I didn't want to smack anyone.

Later in the year, I read another YA love triangle, Elizabeth Scott's The Unwritten Rule, and had the very opposite reaction.  Now, Scott's books are hit or miss for me.  I tend to like every other one (Living Dead Girl; Love You Hate You Miss You; Something, Maybe?  Oh yes!  Bloom, Stealing Heaven?  Not so much.)  The Unwritten Rule fell into the unfortunate latter category.  I couldn't stand the protaga-dude and dudette.  I felt like he was a shallow jerk and she was a selfish bitch masquerading as a "good" girl.  I felt that neither of them gave the best friend enough respect or credit: yes, she could be mean, but she also had a pretty terrible home life.  Now, Sarah of Smart Bitches Trashy Books disagrees with me, but even for teenagers, these two were acting pretty horrible in the name of "love" (and I gave them about three months anyway).

Which brings me to a very recent chick-lit read: Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed.

I've seen this book on shelves for years but was never tempted to pick it up.  I think I was turned off by the cover (yes, I'm that shallow).  But Jezebel's been posting the shit out of the new movie version starring Kate Hudson, Ginnifer Goodwin, my husband John Krasinski, and some guy who played Erica Kane's aborted fetus on All My Children.  And I was sick at home one day with only my Nook for company, so I figured, why not?

I don't know if I'll see the movie, but I really, really enjoyed the book.

As a "good girl" who struggled to break out of that shell for a really long time, I could relate to Rachel, who spent her life trying to do the right thing (good college, law degree, career), only to end up sleeping with Dex, a fellow law school alum and the fiance of her childhood best friend Darcy.  Sure, Darcy's bitchiness comes off as cartoonish at times, but there's also so much of a history between the two women that I understood why Rachel still considered Darcy her best friend, and vice versa.  What I loved best about Something Borrowed was Rachel's palpable struggle with the whole situation.  She had, in fact, introduced Darcy to Dex when she herself didn't feel worthy of such a great guy.  She knew falling for him in the months before his wedding to Darcy was all kinds of ill-advised.  She had a believable mix of love, loyalty and loathing for her best friend.  This angst, combined with Giffin's breezy writing style, is why I'm currently rereading Something Borrowed.

(Plus, Rachel quotes Creedence Clearwater Revival, one of my favorite bands because I think I'm actually a 50-year-old man.)

Growing up, we're often inundated with "girl code"--you don't go near your friends' boys, even after they've broken it off.  As grown-ups, however, many of us realize that people often meet and fall in love under less than ideal circumstances.  A good love triangle book reminds its readers that what sounds so black and white when you're a kid morphs into shades of gray when you're a teen or an adult.  Either way, there will be tears and scars, but the lucky and genuine ones can emerge with relationships relatively intact.

Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing, Mama: Away We Go

There is nothing more annoying than knowing you're being marketed to.



I can picture the pitch in L.A.: it's a love story, but the couple is QUIRKY! They're not married, BUT she's pregnant! The guy is WACKY! He pretends to be Casey Kasem, but he SELLS INSURANCE so it's IRONIC! Let's throw in some BLACK-FRAMED GLASSES, ALTERNATIVE MUSIC, and ROAD-TRIP HIJINKS and we'll have MOVIES WHITE PEOPLE LIKE! The hipsters will EAT THIS SHIT UP!



And despite it all, I did. Stupid movie wouldn't LET me hate it.



Short summary: John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph play Burt and Verona, an insurance salesman and a freelance illustrator who live and love in a Colorado shack (not much of an exaggeration). She's preggers, he's over the moon about it. There's only one problem: his parents (the always-wonderful Jeff Daniels and Catherine O'Hara), basically the reason they moved from Chicago to Colorado, will be moving to Europe shortly before the baby is due. So Burt and Verona make a decision: they'll trek around the continental U.S. for a place they can call home.



From Phoenix to Tucson to Milwaukee to Montreal, Burt and Verona encounter old work buddies with absolutely no filters (Alison Janney, whose hysterical performance made me really start enjoying the film), annoying trustafarians (Maggie Gyllenhaal and Josh Hamilton), and their settled college friends (Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey), whose boisterous, diverse family is not without its darkness. Burt and Verona also confront their own family issues: Verona's parents died when she was in college, and her sister doesn't think she has properly grieved. Burt, meanwhile, must unexpectedly take Verona to Miami when his brother is suddenly left a single parent--bursting Burt's delighted dad-to-be bubble and frightening him with the infinite potential of familial disaster.



In a lesser movie--perhaps one not co-written by Dave Eggers (people love or hate the guy--I fall into the former category)--Burt and Verona would be the passive characters, letting all these characters happen to them. They'd be overshadowed by the sheer nuttiness of the common misconception that Verona is nine months along (she's six), parents who are for dual breastfeeding and against strollers, and eleven-year-old girls loudly referred to as "baby dykes" by their own mothers. For a while--especially after the brilliant Allison Janney showed up and I nearly peed myself with laughter--I thought this was exactly what would happen.



I was wrong. Burt and Verona are a lovely, balanced couple who are perpetually bemused by the weirdness of the outside world. Their complementing personalities serve them well: he's perpetually excited, a Manic Pixie Dream Boy without the mental illness. She's quieter, more watchful, at times resigned. As Alexi Murdoch (reminiscent of the late great Nick Drake) croons on the soundtrack, it's the two of them against the world--and they're okay with that. They're aware of their own weirdness: the fact that they don't need anyone but each other to get by. It's not their relationship that's the issue, ever: it's the question of where they, and their unborn little girl, will best live out each precious day.





Yeah, I know, it sounds wildly barfy. But stay with me here. Two words: Maya. Rudolph. Sure, she always made me laugh on Saturday Night Live, and she gave a sweet, subtle performance in A Prairie Home Companion. (Then again, so did Lindsay Lohan. Oh, Lohan. But that's another post.) Watching her in this film, I was reminded of how Tom Hanks, he of two Academy Awards and all things grave and intense, started out as a comedian. A sitcom actor whom no one took seriously--he did Bosom Buddies, for God's sake. Until the early nineties, when the lighthearted funnyman blew everyone away with just how tear-jerkingly astonishing he could be.



Maya Rudolph is 2009's Tom Hanks.



Her Verona is tentative, sardonic, and luminous all at once. While Burt insists he wants their child to cobble (he really means whittle), and falls over outdoor hotel structures, Verona is there to gently guide him back into the real world. He'd be at loose ends without her, and he knows it (smart guy). But Verona never takes Burt for granted, either--his genuine goofiness often eases her troubled mind and keeps her from being too pissed off when yet another clueless individual mistakes her for nine months pregnant. And if her beautiful bedtime lullaby to Burt's young niece is any indication, she will be a wonderful mother.


(In case you're wondering about John Krasinski, he too does a nice job. I could swear there's at least one moment where he is straining to not look into the camera Jim Halpert-style, but that could just be my Office fan paranoia. John Krasinski is like Michael Cera: he plays himself, and he does it well. As long as he chooses the right roles, that is just fine by me. Not every actor has to be Marlon Brando.)
For standing out in a phenomenal supporting cast, the Give This Actor a Movie Now! Award goes to Chris Messina, who you may remember as Random Dude Friend of Patrick Dempsey #3 in Made of Honor or more notably as Ted, Claire's kind lawyer boyfriend, on Six Feet Under. Messina only appears in a few scenes, but makes every line count in his skillful portrayal of a happy, yet haunted, husband and father. Have your Kleenex handy for his late-night diner speech about what truly makes a home, enacted with some very unique props--quite possibly the most moving moment in the film.


In short, did Away We Go annoy me? Sometimes. Was it perfect? Nope. Were there scenes where it tried way too hard? Yup. Did I feel as if I were being marketed to? Absomalutely.


Am I still pondering it a week later, and frantically searching my schedule to fit in a second viewing?


Yes. Yes, I am.