Hanging on the telephone
A complex, clever story is built around the fate of a single romance.
Limerence. A gentle, tender sort of word, most often associated with the delirious first rush of falling in love. But Rosie Walsh is much more interested in the flipside of this fascinating psychological state. So, in her fifth novel, she has girl meet boy, gives them one “glowing, lambent” week, then … nothing. Eddie drops off the planet. He doesn’t call, answer, or reply to messages, and Sarah has no idea why. Flummoxed, she fixates on him. As the weeks drag by, she winds herself into fragile, twitchy hypervigilance.
A quick note: this is a book for those who understand the basics of technology and social media – who will empathise with Sarah’s increasing addiction to her phone. Or when a long-awaited speech bubble pops up on Facebook.
“I tingled. Terror, delight, terror, delight … A terrified euphoria blew over me.”
It’s beautifully done. Walsh is a bit of a British Carrie Bradshaw: she used to blog for Marie Claire about her own messy online dating experiences. She is clearly mining some of that here, and what I like is that she’s unapologetic about hanging a whole novel off the fate of one romance. She twists real tension into this story, ratcheting up Sarah’s obsession until the reading experience feels compulsive, too. It’s like reading a weirdly emotionally intelligent thriller.
Walsh blogged under the pseudonym Lucy Robinson and wrote her first four books under that name. I don’t know what they’re like, but I can understand
Walsh twists real tension into this story, ratcheting up Sarah’s obsession until the reading experience feels compulsive, too.
why she uses her real name for Ghosted: it’s a complex, cleverly structured story layered with wisdom and wit. Also, large parts of it – mostly those glowing, lambent parts – are set in a small English village much like Walsh’s own hometown. The meet cute involves a meadow and a stray sheep, followed by cider at a country pub. Briar roses topple from a roof;
everywhere is “the sour-milk sweetness of elderflower blossom … scorched grass … a barley field, a feathered, husk-green carpet panting and bulging with hot air”.
Fear not: such flowery bits are rare and carefully rationed. Walsh uses them as a veneer; there is grief and guilt metastasising under the surface. And elsewhere, she gives over whole sections to darkness. The grim boredom of infertility, the death of a child and of a marriage, familial obligations that grind on and grind down. These subplots are not tied up neatly at the end. Walsh lets them be, and thus gives them substance.