Romance queen Jane Costello serves up a blockbuster under another name
A romance writer switches names to deliver a story of substance.
First, Jane Costello wrote nine bestselling romance novels. They were fine but fluffy, turning on such plot points as being jilted at the altar, resolving to lose weight and hitting 30.
Then she wrote You Me Everything and hit the jackpot. This book is different. Meaty. Mortality looms large, as does motherhood and that habit life has of sneaking up and smacking us round the chops.
Here’s the set-up: Jess and 10-year-old William are spending a summer with William’s dad, Adam. He happens to own a gorgeous chateau in the south of France, the sort of place that’s all honeyed light, whitewash, bowls of figs and flaky croissants. Even experienced vicariously, it’s a sweet spot for a holiday.
But things are tense. Jess and Adam split shortly after William’s birth. Adam’s good with child support but crap at the part that really matters: getting to know his son, showing an interest, showing love.
Jess does not want to be in France. She’s there for her son’s sake and only because her mother entreated her to go – she is in a rest home and deteriorating fast. Jess is eaten up by the thought that instead of spending time with her mum she’s stuck seething at her ex.
A related thread of hot pain runs through this story. The author reveals it with care and grace; the trauma is underplayed and thus amplified.
In this and throughout the book, it’s clear there is an exceptionally emotionally intelligent creator at work. I particularly liked the way William has his own angst and agency – often, children in adults’ books are reduced to their schedules or their quirks.
I liked, too, the lurching, imperfect unfolding of William’s relationship with his father, foiled by the child’s blind faith and excitement.
Costello’s writing has a consistent easy beauty. Useless exes are dubbed “beautiful shitheads”; a village is “perched so high on a hill that it feels like the clouds have been lowered”; on meeting Adam’s new squeeze, Jess observes “gleaming teeth and long blonde hair scraped back like the tail on a dressage pony”. Snicker.
Cannily, Costello has drawn a line between this and her previous work by adopting the pseudonym Catherine Isaac. Hollywood sees something special, too: Lionsgate has leapt on the movie rights. The company made blockbusters out of YA series Twilight, Hunger Games and Divergent, and this production is being handled by the duo who made Twilight and the John Green hit The Fault In Our Stars.
In other words, juggernaut incoming.
The unfolding of William’s relationship with his father is foiled by the child’s blind faith and excitement.