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.

A Cynic's Defense of Romance Novels

I am not a romantic.

Even at sixteen, when a girl is supposed to be all starry-eyed and love-drunk, I was more of the cynic/realist of my relationships.  On our first date, my then-boyfriend and I went to a park with a gazebo.  "Stars are cool," he remarked.  "That was really corny!" I chirped.  He kissed me anyway.

I'm not sure why I'm this way.  My parents may argue a lot, but they've been happily wed for over thirty years, so it's not like I came of age among marital discord and strife.  Maybe it links to why I've cursed like a sailor since I was twelve: in a baggy shirt without eyeliner I look like a virginal milkmaid.  In a tight shirt with eyeliner, I look like a virginal milkmaid trying to be slutty.  What can I say?  I've always been about contrasts.

So it was the weirdest damn thing when last year, I found myself getting into romance novels.

Like the most hush-hush of sex acts, it started out innocently enough: my friend Bryn Donovan sent  me an advance copy of her novel An Experienced Mistress so I could review it for the blog.  After a stressful workday, I sat down at Borders--my punk rocker crush in plain sight--and perused the PDF.  At first, the Catholic schoolgirl in me blushed and giggled.

Then, the Catholic schoolgirl in me realized just what it was I was reading--a story of an interesting woman who had a lot of steamy, well-written sex--and got very, very turned on.

Shit!  I realized.  I think I like romance novels!

It didn't stop there.  Two days later I found myself, as I usually do, in Barnes & Noble on my lunch break.  Except this time I was visiting a different section.  I timidly poked my head into where it said "Romance"--with the side-eye I was giving to make sure no one I knew saw and judged me, I may as well have been buying crack.  Instead of a familiar face, however, I saw a tall, attractive woman, also in work clothes, perusing titles.  We smiled at each other conspiratorially.

I bought Lessons in French by Laura Kinsale.  You never forget your first time.

That was almost a year ago, and since then, thanks to Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, my local library, and a generous friend who gave me a whole tote bag full of her old paperbacks, I'm an official convert.

Let's address the arguments right away.  Yes, some romance novels are crap.  Terribly written tripe with rapey heroes, stupid heroines, and an HEA (Happily Ever After) I wouldn't believe in a million years.  You know what most romance novels are, though?  Well-written.  With flawed but funny heroes, smart and interesting heroines, and a HEA I see coming (because it's romance and you have to have the HEA) but can totally believe.  Let's just say that Jennifer Crusie, Laura Kinsale, Eloisa James, Lauren Dane, and the Godmother of them all, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, kick Dan Brown's vanilla-prosed, conspiracy-spouting ASS.

Because you know where else there's bad writing?  In memoir.  In sci-fi.  In crime, both true and fiction.  In New York Times-bestsellers.  If I have to read about yet another repressed housewife whiiiiining about her husband's affair, I may blow up a suburb my friends don't inhabit.  And yet none of these genres get the hate that romance does.

Do men like romance heroes exist in real life?  Some may argue no.  Some of my happily-married and -coupled friends may beg to differ.  But does it matter?  A big part of romance is escapism.  Fantasy.  But readers can still learn from this.  I'm not saying any of us should hold out for the perfect man, but we shouldn't settle, either.  And really, most romance heroes aren't perfect (really, I have no patience for the ones who are).  Just like the heroines, though, they learn.

Wanna know why I think romance gets a bad rap?  Fair warning: I'm about to step up on a feminist soapbox, but if you read me regularly that shouldn't be much of a shock.  Romance is a genre largely written by women, for women.  Never mind that it's basically keeping the publishing industry afloat: it's for GIRLS, ewwwwww!  Because women can't possibly know what they want, physically, emotionally, and sexually.  Because there's no way writing and editing a romance novel isn't damn difficult.  Because (and this is a literary argument as old as time), the female experience can't be universal.

*Unpro steps off soapbox*

Look, if romance ain't your bag, it's cool.  I'm not trying to make anyone read a romance, though I certainly won't stop you.  But don't make the mistake that Jezebel's Morning Gloria did a week ago, when she denigrated all romance as rape-promoting garbage, using one or two blogs as expert sources.  It's like anything else: don't trash it if you don't know what you're talking about.  (Thanks to Jezebel's Sadie Stein for her excellent rebuttal.)

I admit, I used to trash romance too.  Because it was easy.  Easier to giggle at Fabio (who's supposed to be pretty cool in real life) and lump a literary phenomenon into a National Enquirer-esque category of fluff.  Easier to judge a book by its (sometimes admittedly silly) cover.

A year later, it's Friday night and I'm heading to Borders, thinking "I could really use some Jennifer Crusie right now."

Without any shame whatsoever.