The Opposite of Maybe - Maddie Dawsonseeders: 46
leechers: 3
The Opposite of Maybe - Maddie Dawson (Size: 1.06 MB)
Description A heartfelt and exceptionally human novel about the best mistakes a person can make Jonathan and Rosie have been together so long they finish each other’s sentences—so when he (finally) proposes and asks her to move across the country with him, everyone is happily surprised. But when things suddenly unravel, Rosie sends Jonathan packing and moves back home with Soapie, the irascible, opinionated grandmother who raised her. Now she has to figure out how to fire Soapie’s very unsuitable caregiver, a gardener named Tony who lets her drink martinis, smoke, and cheat at Scrabble. It’s meant to be a temporary break, of course—until Rosie realizes she’s accidentally pregnant at 44, completely unequipped for motherhood, and worse, may be falling in love with Tony, whose life is even more muddled than hers. When Soapie reveals a long-hidden secret, Rosie wonders if she has to let go of her fears, and trust that the big-hearted, messy life that awaits her just may be the one she was meant to live. Amazon.com Review Essay by Maddie Dawson As a writer, I’m always thrilled when a character shows up in my head, demanding that I write a story about her. (Mostly it’s women who initially come knocking at my brain’s door, but I’ve noticed that they quickly bring along some men, usually the men who are giving them the troubles they need me to write down.) It was no different when Rosie Kelley showed up one night. She woke me up to tell me that she was forty-four years old, she was pretty sure she was pregnant for the first time, and the grandmother who raised her might be dying, and she was breaking up with the guy who got her pregnant because he wanted to move across country—and well, she’d just realized she wasn’t ready to move away with a man who was perhaps a little bit selfish. (Maybe a lot selfish!) News like this makes me bolt upright in the bed and go off looking for my laptop. The sun was just coming up as I typed up the complicated facts of Rosie’s life: an orphan, unmarried, never really lived the life she wanted, 15-year relationship with a nerdy man who collects teacups…and on and on. Believe me, I wouldn’t have gotten up if she’d just been one of those whiny types. I hate whiners! Over the next few days, I discovered she was funny and irreverent and completely unprepared for the life that had just reached up and chosen her. She had depth and empathy and also she was scared out of her mind, which always fascinates me about people. I quickly decided I knew how things were going to turn out in this book. I went to work every day, typing up the story, weaving in subplots that showed up, (thank you, subplots), and enjoying the details of Rosie’s agonies and ecstasies. I had sex scenes and food scenes and people dancing in the living room and cheating at Scrabble and fighting and making up…and then one day I got close to the end of the book and the bottom fell out. Rosie refused to do what I thought she and I had agreed that she would do. It wouldn’t work, she said. It would, I told her. And then she said: No way. My friends argued with me, pointing out that it was MY book, that Rosie wasn’t—you know, really real—and urging me to write the book the way I thought it should be. So I tried that, and it didn’t work. Fell flat. I guess the point is that you breathe life into these characters who show up and agree to talk to you, and then—just like with the real humans you raised—there comes a time when you have to listen to them. We read to be intrigued, delighted, and to find out what happens next—and sometimes, it turns out, writers are just as surprised as readers by what our characters decide to do. From Booklist Rosie and Jonathan, lovers and partners for more than 15 years, get engaged, pack up to move to California for Jonathan’s new job, then break up, all within the first 100 pages of Dawson’s novel. It’s a relief because self-centered Jonathan is such an unlikable character, and the change clears the way for Rosie, who finds herself pregnant at 44 with Jonathan’s child. Soapie, Rosie’s cantankerous grandmother, is beginning to decline, and she’s hired Tony, a young man who mixes her Bloody Marys and appears at first to be a gigolo. Rosie moves back with Soapie to check up on her and her new “hired help,” finding that Soapie also has the daily attention of George, a married friend whose wife has dementia, and that Tony is a actually a warm family guy. Together, the four misfits play games, sing, and dance, creating a “sweetness that comes when something can’t be permanent: it comes attached to an ache.” Dawson keeps readers turning the pages to find out who Rosie will choose in the end. --Laurie Borman Sharing Widget |
All Comments