The Charm That Is Kinsella and Her 'Twenties Girl'

𝑫𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒈𝒐 𝒘𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆, 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒅𝒐. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒏, 𝒑𝒖𝒕 𝒐𝒏 𝒂 𝒓𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒎𝒊𝒍𝒆, 𝒎𝒊𝒙 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝒂 𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒍𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒄𝒌𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒍 𝒂𝒏𝒅...𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒈𝒐!

My stack of new books has depleted to zero and I've resorted to rereading my old favorites now. And when you are drowned in lethargy, an ennui dragging your body into a heap of hopelessness and unproductivity, Sophie Kinsella is exactly what you need. She is a dart of energy into your frozen heart, thawing it. Trust me. I'm not exaggerating. The truth of the matter is I've always wanted a ghost for a friend.

.

. . Okay...that's a lie, because I can't really bear horror movies. And I am not much into ghost stories either. But the idea seems cool and hip enough, anyway. This particular ghost is less of a ghost, though, and more of a guardian angel. Albeit an annoying, intrusive, controlling guardian angel. It's like a genie who smoothens out all your worry lines by making their causes disappear, by culling valuable information for you to cinch your deal with your clients, by eavesdropping on people's conversations to help you know if they are back-bitching about you, or - even better - what they are back-bitching about. Even though it's your hundred and five years old relative and the conversation does involve details about your intimate relationship and she is too shrewd and peevish to not annoy you with her shrill yelling voice into making you do her bidding too. Even though she's completely oblivious to her...deadness. This kind of ghosts makes their whole existence more endearing to me. Okay, I am going to go on a babble here and tell you something.

My views on ghosts are kind of two-fold, undulating between wetting-your-pants kind of terrifying and wetting-your-pants kind of entertaining. Mostly, the concept of ghosts is terrifying when they don't materialize right in front of you, so your own subconscious is just happy enough to weave ghastly, opaque, overly graphic stories to seize your heart. Like that time in college when my friend and I were the last ones to leave our lab. It was near dusk, and the corridor was devoid of any single stirring breath, the lights all put out for the day with only a dysfunctional one flickering on and off in the end. And on the other end, bathed in total darkness was a shadow. Also blinking in and out of existence. Suddenly both of us were reminded of all the times the story of this building being haunted was recounted to us and of all those times we took no notice of that. But we did now, and dashed straight for the stairs, never looking back. When we came back to the lab the next day, the corridor was lit up bright and sunny and it was as if we hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe we did. But we were still shit-scared for life. And that's the thing. These unconfirmed sightings wetted up by our own imagination and fueled on by others' - These are terrifying. But the ones that we can see? Not all of them are not terrifying, right? Like the Nearly Headless Nick or Moaning Myrtle? So I like them, of course. And I like this one too. Sadie. She is Lara's great aunt whom she and her whole family never visited until her funeral. And when they did, Lara couldn't discern the gulf between reality and imagination anymore. And from there on starts this whirlwind of being swept away by a spirit who is as spunky and controlling and hilarious and entertaining and staunch and rooted in her ideas of men and fashion.

Sadie cannot go into...wherever people go after death without a particular necklace which is now missing and together they begin the chase. In the meantime, their bond hardens into something real and inseverable, they fall for the same guy, and their friendship is fraught with hues of love and irritation and fondness and tension and fights and regrets and wishful thinking and the wanting of never letting go. The twists and slaps of discovery unveiled along the way would stir your brain, make your head reel with shock and your hands fist with agitation. Your heart would clench in hopeless dismay at what-could-have-beens, what-never-weres. Sophie Kinsella's credit lies in the stupefying way she has crafted the story. It's like her books are this reversed version of Pandora's box and instead of dispensing remorse and regrets and sadness and all the terribleness into the world, it heaves out laughs, loads of them, and makes you forget about all the terribleness of this tacky, wretched world.

She made us fall hard for the characters, for a frown-covered, dull-dressing corporate guy, for a girl who is obsessed with her idea of love and how she should achieve that love, for a girl who is obnoxious and entitled and ungrateful to her parents but also determined and headstrong and undermined by said parents, for a ghost who is amusing and annoying and wise and gutsy and impulsive and a fashionista all at the same time.

If a love-affair is one-sided, it's only ever a question, never an answer. You can't live your life waiting for an answer.

The novel is peppered with globs of humor and wit and the frissons and tizzes of impending romance and that old-school twenties charm, that touch of nostalgia for the past we could never have, that yearning of the simplicity of a whole other century, the glitter of the flapper dresses and headbands and feathers, the glamor and shimmer of the cocktail parties and shimmying and swishing your hips to crinkling jazz music.

But also, there's the lick of flaming powerfulness of female solidarity and portrayals of on-the-verge-of-breaking, strong, relatable women characters. Kinsella makes them lean on each other in times of shambles, two girls from two different times, makes them support and learn from each other, with Lara's conviction of her one "true love" coming true and her sometimes-bothersome penchant for tenaciously holding on to things, and Sadie's barrel of twenties songs and whirring dance moves and fierce resoluteness and noncommittal dating advice and renditions of tally-ho! It's a light-hearted attempt at puffing up your inner strength and steeling yourself against all the hurt the world hurls at you, and not dodging them but soaking them up and letting them go.

You can't dwell on what might have been. You have to look at what is.