This isn’t the first review of Rainbow Rowell’s new novel, Landline, and I know it won’t be the last. People around here seem to dig her writing, and with good reason. She knows how to twist words that get you in the gut and I’ve never read anyone who describes the first flush of love the way this woman does. Normally when I finish a book, I take some time to process it, but with this one I’m just diving in. Landline was waiting in my mailbox for me when I got home three and a half hours ago. I closed it about twenty minutes ago. It’s the kind of book you don’t want to put down and you don’t want to end. Once again, Rowell has created a world I want to dive into and live in for awhile. I could tell you about how well-written the book is, how it has some flaws, but how overall it’s one of the best things I’ve read all year. I won’t, though, because you probably already know that. I’m going to tell you something else instead.
You don’t know when you’re twenty-three.
You don’t know what it really means to crawl into someone else’s life and stay there. You can’t see all the ways you’re going to get tangled, how you’re going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten–in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems.
She didn’t know that at twenty-three.
I was twenty-two when I got married. College sweetheart. I was young, sometimes I think I was too young. Fast forward and this year we’ll be celebrating our tenth anniversary. There were parts of this book that had me openly weeping (thank God Mr. ModernLove works late) because they were so real to me. At 22 or 23, you’re not a fully formed person. You still have so much to figure out and so far to go. When you attach yourself to someone else at that age, you either do it together or you do it apart. I was an idiot kid then who screwed up more than my fair share of times. There was a lot I wasn’t ready for and this book explores that in such a clear, exquisite way. How it’s so much about work, about trusting that the other person isn’t going to give up on you. Love can only take you so far and the rest you have to do yourselves. Rowell nails everything about relationships, about how we want to change ourselves sometimes, about how hard it can be to accept those things about us. I can’t write a review of this as a book because it would be like writing a review of my life. It all just hits too close to home, but in such a good way.
Landline is a rare book. It’s rare, it’s beautiful, and if you’ve ever been in love, it’s a book that you’ll understand.