BOOkclub It’s Christmas come early for romance fans
All About Us
Is it too early to talk about Christmas?
Let’s be honest, I have nothing else to look forward to this year but October still feels a little early to be thinking about jingle bells and thinking about this year’s turkey accompaniments.
When I picked up Tom Ellen’s latest work, All About Us, I went to the first page without reading the back cover or any other clues as to what the story could entail. My fault, I know. I sleepwalked into reading a book set at Christmas time but here we are.
Our leading man Ben is a big Christmas fan. The whole month of December is his jam, but things with his wife Daphne haven’t been going so great for the last few years, so by the end of the year 2020, he’s not really feeling in the festive or goodwill mood. The magic is gone, and when an old uni friend Alice gets in touch for a drink and wink wink (we all know where this could go), Ben begins to wonder if the life he is living is making everyone around him happy.
What if he’d chosen Alice over Daphne in the beginning during a game of hide and seek at university? Would things have panned out differently?
Just when he’s about to open his heart to his mate Harv in the pub on Christmas Eve, a mysterious watchseller gives him a broken watch for free. But it’s not all it seems.
In line with Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ben is transported to Christmases past, present and future to retrace his steps, find out where he went wrong and to help him put things right.
Had I known it would be based on the
Dickensian classic would I have picked this book up? Regrettably, no, I would not have. That story, albeit a fabulous tale, has been done to death and quite frankly cannot ever be improved. Well unless you include the Muppet’s remake, then I’ll give you that.
It’s a story that we all know so well that whatever way it’s spun; the ending is never a surprise. The narrator sees the error of their ways, blah blah blah, the end. Now that’s not to say that Tom’s retelling wasn’t an interesting one, I did enjoy the building love story between him and wife Daphne (she’s a great character by the way) but I knew exactly how it would end as soon as I read my way through a few of Ben’s past Christmases.
Now Ben is a character I did not get on with. He’s self-deprecating, but it’s a never ending “woe is me” narrative that makes you want to give his shoulders a good shake. No wonder the watchseller singled him out. The man needed a boot in the bum to get his a**e in gear.
Some of the writing was sweet, but some was a little predicable. And why, even during quite devastating life events, do characters look at each other after saying something remotely light-hearted and “fall about laughing”? A quick exhale of air through the nose I can get, but when your marriage is falling apart and you watch your gym-obsessed pal eat Haribos? Not the time for a fit of the giggles.
I feel a little guilty as this book will appeal to many and it’s refreshing to read from the perspective of a man who finds himself struggling with of adulthood.