This Time Next Year: An Almost Perfect End to the Year

"Where do you want to be this time next year?"

This question is intermittently scattered through the book over and over. And eventually, it gets to you. You start to wonder. You want to wonder.

Now all this wondering should lead to something conclusive, especially for a self-professed planner like me who likes to be prepared for every curveball, just to be on the safe side. But of course, it doesn't mean that it did. Or will.

But that's not the point, really. It is the wondering, the hoping and the dreaming that flames to life in you on hearing that line.

Anyway. The book, yes. For ease of understanding, I have decided to ramp up and categorize my ratings.

Writing - 4.5 Plot - 3.5 Dialogues - 4 Character development - 4 Ending - 3 Sophie Cousens is someone I would love to envy and cry for. She has this grace to her writing, that glides by in a seamless patchwork of lyrical words that would feel like a caress to your senses, a polish and shine in her prose which brims with that British literariness but sounds oddly comforting too, has this finesse to the structuring of her thoughts, which burst on to the papers in an uncluttered lucidity. So many times I find myself floundering for the exact word to pop in my head, to make sense of what I am exactly feeling, but I can't because suddenly I am stuck groping for it in my mind-dungeon, questioning my vocabulary, questioning my grasp of the language, questioning my existence. But Sophie Cousens sounds so far from me. She sounds like she knows exactly what she is talking about.

Light blazing and bursting high into the air, floating down again in a twinkling canopy of burnished rain. In her debut novel, Sophie has crafted a beautiful tale of self-love, self-discovery, self-reliance, familial discordance melting into a respectful bond. It starts with New Year's Eve of 2019, when Minnie goes to a birthday party with her boyfriend, Greg, but she is clearly reluctant to. We soon learn the reason: She thinks she is jinxed on this particular day and the next day, which is the 1st of January. Which also happens to be her birthday. The author goes on to establish the veracity of the jinx part: We see Minnie getting her shirt vomited on, being spilled with desserts and drinks, and if that's not enough, she gets trapped in the bathroom all night long, on New Year's Eve, on her birthday. Okay, I was sold there that the jinx thing really isn't a myth. And then enters Quinn Hamilton, the birthday boy, Minnie's birthday twin, her rescuer of bathroom-entrapment. And we learn the most interesting part, the USP of the story for me: the hilarious and stinging connection between these two. That not only were they born on the same day, but in the same hospital, with their mothers in the same room. And that Quin's mother apparently stole her name for him. We time-travel to 1989 in a flashback, where the two women are shown struggling and panting and breathing hard in labor in the hospital room on New Year's Eve, with a prize-money hovering over them for the first baby of the next year. Connie, Minnie's mother, a loud, outgoing and rambunctious woman, with Tara, Quinn's mother, who is the opposite image, with soft tones, mild manner, polished, manicured demeanor, a bourgeois classiness clinging to her. And yet, Connie slowly guides her through labor to diminish her pain, shares the story of how she is going to name her child Quinn because it's a family name and is supposed to bring good luck. But then the babies are born and Tara and her husband win the money, for their baby boy - Quinn. I know. I was infuriated on Connie's behalf, her curbed anger for the woman whom she thought she had helped in the most excruciatingly painful moment of their lives. And my heart then twisted for Minnie. Because, ahem, Minnie Cooper? I wouldn't wish that name on my worst enemy - Or no, maybe I would. I could already imagine the tear tracks that would inevitably emerge on Minnie's cheeks throughout her life. And then there are all these accounts of her mother berating her for having such bad luck on her birth, for hurling the ill-incident and that talk of superstitious bad luck for any and every event that goes haywire, wrong in Minnie's life. You can actually feel Minnie's bile of resentment growing as she is compared all her life to some never-seen, unknown child who happened to have a name-stealer for a mother. For Minnie, her life was shaped around the name Quinn and the swell of fortune that was supposed to come her way with that name but was instead usurped away unfairly, with her mother's refrain of "This wouldn't happen to a Quinn Cooper," ringing in her ears every time she faced disappointments. But remember what John Green said in one of his books? "Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn't the way they actually are." Well, it kind of goes like that here. Quinn and Minnie meet and the chemistry between them is instant, palpable, electrifying the air. You know something is going to happen between them right from the start, because, well. And I won't spoil it for you. But I will say this: Quinn turns out to be an aberration to the rich-boy stereotype. Or maybe not an aberration, since every rich boy always has some heart-wrenching story that makes you root for him. Well, Quinn's will scratch and pummel at your heart, because the guy is a successful businessman, sweet, caring, considerate and generous, and compassionate. And kind. Also, a bit of a commitment-phobe, but I guess his idea of love was marred by his dysfunctional family life. So yeah, one pass for Quinn. But more than Quinn, I was rooting for Minnie. She felt so close to my heart, with her penchant for putting herself down and selling herself short, stemming from a deep-rooted dislike for herself, an apathy for her own well-being. She has also started her own pie business selling to the elderly generation, with her best friend Leila. Who is one of my favorite characters in this story - A dazzling personality in the flesh, predisposed to be conspicuous with a glamorous fashion sense and totally content with herself. Though, I do wonder if it's easier to be content in and with yourself when you are not by yourself. What I mean is she has a wonderful boyfriend, Ian, and their relationship is one of the sweetest and most secure and stable ones I have been privy to, despite Ian seemingly imprisoned to the couch all day in his pajamas, playing some sort of video game. Really, I am still not sure what exactly he does for a living. But novels, where the friendships are an emphasized plot point, have always been my weakness. Here too, Leila and Minnie's friendship is eye-watering, something to covet, something to cradle to your chest. They balance each other out, blurs out the other's rough edges, are not hesitant to be honest with each other and despite falling out for a while, still remember to be a friend when the other needs her to be. Throughout the book, Leila, with a little help from Quinn, peppers Minnie with her "You need to be happy yourself first" approach to life, urging her on to stop burying and hiding herself behind a good-luck moniker of a name.

And that speech at the wedding? Gdjhsldhf, that's the ultimate friendship ballad, the ultimate friendship goal. "Some things are all Minnie, and I wouldn't have it any other way." I also want my best friend to dedicate a speech solely to me, instead of her husband. Except, wait, I don't have a best friend. Ugh. How come the women in these stories get both the boy and the girl? Anyway, I digress. Of course, the romance is adorable. As I said, I won't spoil it, but it will make you squeal with joy and want to clutch your chest in articulation of "aww" (I didn't, no, but if you are that kind of person, you surely would, no judgment here). I am so glad to see that Minnie didn't compromise on her self-worth but actually worked on herself, worked on being self-reliant, as much as you can be, was able to not blame everything on her "bad luck" and learnt to shed off that veneer of herself which was pockmarked with self-doubts, self-recriminations, an acute sense of self-dislike. Peeled off a skin which was always heavy with a weight of not-enough-ness. When she finally overpowered her superstitious, jinx-consumed mind, it was exquisite. “I’m happy to be me, and I’ve never felt like that.” But I am also extremely blissed-out that the book showed us it is okay to need somebody else every once in a while, that it is okay to trust other people, that self-independence does not necessarily mean you won't want to depend on others; it just means that you won't have to. Humans are inherently social creatures, after all. And this novel successfully portrays that through Minnie's soul-rinsing journey. And the parents! Oh, that was a sheer delight to read. The friendship between Tara and Connie was unexpected, but not totally unpredictable. The way Connie's character grew and inflated with compassion and understanding, not only of Tara, but her clock-tinkering husband and her daughter, was a beautiful revelation. The novel championed the top-rung status of mental health and prioritized it over rose-tinted romances, which I loved the most. Also, can I just fangirl over how much I loved her depiction of India without all the stereotypical, judgmental blemishes? (Like India is a place just teeming with Yoga enthusiasts - Newsflash: It isn't.) Sophie Cousens drew such a serene and beautiful and picturesque picture of the beaches and grouchy old people and the sweet vendors, all sprinkled with so much fun. The whole novel actually sporadically bursts with humor and references that I actually get. Now, let me come to the point as to why I was disappointed in certain areas. First are the flashbacks. After every couple of Present Day Scenario, the memory spool is winded back, and we are thrust into New Year's Eves of 2019, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2015 and so on. In doubles, too, because half of them are to elaborate the New Year's jinx that Minnie had so ingrained in her since her childhood, while the other half painted the difficult home life of Quinn with a divorced, anxious mother always in his need and care. All these flashbacks disrupted the flow of the story massively, made me want to skim over them or to just skip them. They were significant in making us see all the dimensions of the characters, yes, and once I started reading them, I did like them, but I felt like they were too long, too frequent, too hefty with details that could have been shown in a more compact way. I would feel my attention wavering whenever I saw those flashback chapters next, would feel myself yearning to speed-walk to the present days whenever they emerged. And second: All those coincidences, that are shown in parts through the flashbacks. They cannot be possible, can they? I mean, the first coincidence seemed justified: the 30th birthday party where they run into each other. But then the author goes to show us all the other connections they have had over the past years without being aware of it, the accidents that made them cross each other's paths obliviously so many times before finally meeting. I am all for having that kind of scintillating connection with someone, honestly. I like the idea of fate and destiny tethering two people together, some Force of Universe yanking them toward each other. All very starry-eyed romantic. But to a certain extent. Here in this novel, all these connections between Minnie and Quinn didn't feel like fate. It felt like the author was trying to force us to see it as fate, like she was trying to compel us to think and shove it down our throat that these two were destined to be, meant to be together. Especially at the ending. Again, another reminder of how meant to be they are. We didn't need to be reminded. I am really not trying to be harsh here, because I did love the story of Quinn and Minnie and Leila and Ian and Tara and Connie and Fluer, the enigmatic receptionist and Bev, the perpetual environmental worrier, and Alan the sweet, jolly uncle slash driver. I just wish Sophie Cousens had…I don't know, plotted it a little differently, without all these surreal and forceful attempts at making us believe in something we already were going to.