Serendipity
Good Fit
- Romance readers interested in 1950s America and the newspaper and magazine world
- Readers who want the theme of divorce, a second chance and a woman building her own way in a warm, humorous tone
- Fans of romance novels with family intrigue and business struggle
Not a Fit
- Readers seeking realistic psychological depth: the characters' turns may be quick and easy
- Readers wanting a fast, compact plot: over 464 pages the same themes may repeat
- Anyone bothered by adult references and a smoking-and-drinking atmosphere
The novel opens in 1953 in Philadelphia. The prologue is a short exchange in which Jory (Marjory) Ryan turns down Ross Landers's dinner invitation: Ross says «it's a pity you won't have dinner with me» and Jory answers «you're about five years late, Ross». So the reader knows from the start that these two once hurt each other and that the story is about a second chance.
The first chapter opens in Jory's memories. At seventeen she became pregnant by Ross, and Ross behaved as though «the girl is lying»; after three months' waiting Jory went to his door, and Ross drove her to Maryland and married her at eleven at night before a justice of the peace. Married life was humiliating; Jory lost the baby and left in the sixth month. She has seen him only three times since, the last at her father's funeral. Now she comes from Florida back to Chestnut Hill — her father's Tudor-style house. The bright red front door is the trace of her teenage rebellion.
Jory in this part is drawn with precise lines: she refuses Ross's money, does not touch the ten thousand dollars from her father's insurance or the three thousand in his bank account, and simply cleans the house and moves in within three weeks. The satin edge of her childhood blanket is her only comfort. The author draws Jory's lonely, proud, wounded image with gentle humour and lays the ground for her building her own way in later chapters.
The Landers family is written more sharply. Father Jasper Landers owns the magazine «Hayal İçinde Gerçek» (HIG; «Reality in Fiction»); his wife Justine is its editor and wants to turn it into a gossip magazine and take full control. Jasper is in a love affair with another woman, Helen, wife of Judge Halvorsen, and under his father's will cannot divorce. Justine came from a poor family, is insulted as «someone who sits on an orange plastic chair», and does not forgive it. Son Ross loves neither parent but resolves money and legal matters between them.
The style is simple, the dialogues lively, the characters' inner voice often repeated. The Justine chapter is the most memorable part: at breakfast she plans revenge on those who opposed her and tells the staff «you are all fired». The weak points are the shifts of tone: a sad memory on one page and comedy on the next pass unevenly, and some episodes are stretched.
- Justine Landers is an original character: harsh, angry, but built on revenge and ambition
- There is a lot of dialogue and short scenes, and the story sometimes moves like a television series
- The magazine and newspaper environment of the period (gossip magazines, advice columns) makes an interesting background
- Repetition of the same phrases and the stretching of some scenes slow the reading
A long family-and-love novel in which a woman builds a large business from nothing
A novel that tells the fate of older women and family secrets in a warm tone
The story of a woman starting again after a painful marriage
After breakfast Justine gathers the magazine's old staff for a meeting: Davon is seventy-seven, Nigel seventy-five, and they number fifteen. So she says «I am renewing the magazine, you are all fired», and lists HIG's content — the Olympics, the mechanical heart, Albert Schweitzer's Nobel — to criticise the staff. At the meeting Ross proposes two weeks' severance for each year of service and a club room for the old staff; Justine agrees only for six months.
Before the meeting Ross meets Lena Davis at the sandwich shop: a girl in a blue dress with bright eyes who studied two years at Villanova. Ross shares a bagel with her, says «your eyes are slightly lilac» and learns the name «Lena Davis»; then the girl disappears. In the afternoon Ross agrees to get his best friend Woo hired at the magazine as a lawyer. The chapter does not yet link Ross's life with Jory's, but the reader expects him to meet Jory again one day.
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