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Ralph's Party

Ralph's Party

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Sean proposes to Milly, she says "yes". They announce it to the family on her first meeting the parents. Then Milly finds out she's pregnant. Sean isn't so happy about it. He likes their life of bar-hopping and recreational drug use. She wants to keep it and Sean starts avoiding her under the pretense of writing his book. He get the idea to write about how women make all the decisions in the world because they are the only ones to decide to keep a baby. Ned finds high school sweetheart, but she's all grown up and over him now. Ned's Australia girl starts sending him pieces of herself (hair, toenails, eyelashes, etc.) in the mail and texting him "cunt" over and over. He finally writes a letter to her parents and we never hear anything more from her. Ned finally decides he needs to get a job and starts working for a temp agency. He meets a girl on the job and they hit it off, but when Ned makes a move, she turns him down stating that he hasn't grown up yet. Ned and Gervase are get close. There are several more incidents of this sort of selfish behaviour that made me thoroughly dislike them both. They came across as the epitome of pampered London types, used to getting their own way, using others without thought of the consequences and so forth, and I really didn't like either of them. I won’t continue with what happens through the book as I don’t want to spoil it if you are thinking of reading, but all I will say is I don’t recommend and if you want to read Lisa Jewell, I would recommend these by her instead as they are all a thousand times better: I must have been about 20 when I read Ralph's Party and I totally fell in love with Ralph and Jem. Plus it was set in North London, where I grew up, and I really felt I was reading about people just like me. I couldn't wait to read After the Party and learn more about these two and I eagerly awaited the release date.

However, the saving grace was the author's fantastic sense of relateability. The moments when the kids are acting up. When Jem is trying to cope with a stinking hangover and has to get up at 6am to sort out the baby. When she's gossiping with women in a posh bar. All of these moments were so beautifully written that I almost felt I was there. If I'd had to buy the book the old-fashioned way, it would have stayed on the bookstore shelf. Because I would have been able to flip through the book and easily determine that the Jewell magic, at least for me, just isn't present. A big, special mention to the narrator, Imogen Church. She gives the characters the right, emotional tone for their situations. She makes them annoying and insufferable, and then calm and restrained. She goes up and down with them and you can almost feel them coming out of your speakers. She's just fantastic and now I'll look for more of her work. The first time I'll look for a narrator, not necessarily an author. During all this drama, Gervase has spent time with each of the boys. He does this thing where he holds their hands and looks deep into their eyes and they go all gooey inside and wind up spilling everything to him. Turns out he's a bit psychic, a gift he got from his mom. He advises all the boys.

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This may be partially my fault as i only knew Lisa Jewell as a thriller/mystery author, and A Friend of The Family certainly isnt that. But i have to say i found this story just okay. It's not awful, but i was glad to have finished it. It’s fair to say that After The Party is totally different to it’s prequel Ralph’s Party. It has a very different feel to it – as I mentioned, Lisa’s writing has evolved – and whereas Ralph’s Party featured six main characters (Ralph, Smith, Siobhan, Karl, Jem and Cheri), After The Party was mainly about Jem and Ralph. The book begins with a prologue, set in the present year, before being split into multiple parts set mainly in the year that causes Jem and Ralph to think about taking a break from each other until we ourselves come up to the breaking point in Jem and Ralph’s relationship. It wasn’t how I expected it to be but I was happily pleased with how it was all laid out. I’m just going to pretend that this wasn’t written by Lisa Jewell because It’s the first book by her that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed. This story is clearly written last century. The men are all entitled and mysoginistic; one who doesn’t view women as real people (Ralph) and one who cheats on his wife and when the women he’s sleeping with gets an abortion he says she’s murdered his baby and he will ‘get his revenge’. He also seems to feel entitled to cheat on his wife and he mentions her being infertile; whilst it is never explicitly said that this is why, it seems implied. I felt pity for his wife till she used a homophobic slur when talking about how women where she lived were worried about any sort of body hair showing. She seemed to be terrified that if she didn’t get rid of all her body hair people would think she was a lesbian, as if a) that was at all true and b) people thinking that would be horrible. She also used an ableist slur.

honestly, i'm not sold on this novel. i wanted desperately to love it, because i won it! and winning is made of awesome! but i couldn't get past all the bullshit and pretense. no one comes across as particularly likable or vulnerable. the writing at times feels stilted (more so at the end when jewell seems to cave to the pressure of the happy ending and needs her characters to find forgiveness - i can't imagine EVER being okay with my fake-hubby disappearing for three weeks to paint pictures of my family so we can start anew. but i am most definitely not jem). Because I didn’t read Ralph’s Party before reading After The Party, I can’t particularly say if Jem and Ralph are the same in the sequel as they were in the prequel. It’s been such a long time that I simply can’t remember their character traits. Both Ralph and Jem have obviously grown up though in the years since we left Ralph’s Party. I admit that I really liked both Ralph and Jem. Yes, they were a tad annoying at times – Ralph running off to California, for one, and Jem getting a bit gooey over Joel another – but it’s obvious to see that they both still love each other, it’s just that they don’t talk about anything. Ever. It seems that, for the most point, that a good banging together of heads may have sorted a lot out. (It wouldn’t have been as good a book, admittedly.) Jem and Ralph are the only recurring characters in the book – the rest seem to flit in and out at will: Lulu, Jem’s sister, Joel, the single dad Jem befriends, Smith and Rosey, Ralph’s best friend and Smith’s girlfriend, a few of the characters from Ralph’s Party appear but not in any real way and only fleetingly.

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EXCERPT: Ralph barely noticed Jem the first time he saw her. He was arguing with his girlfriend, Claudia, sitting at his desk, cradling the phone under his chin as he carelessly pulled elastic bands into tight ligatures around his wrists in an apparently subconscious attempt to cut off his blood supply and end the painful predictability of it all.

I read Ralph's Party eons ago, and I vaguely remembered liking the characters. However, whatever had made them likable was absent from this book. Both Ralph and Jem were utter self-absorbed twits. I believe Jewell was reaching for something profound and wise about aging and coming to grips with lost youth and lost opportunities, while also accepting the more constrained but possibly richer and more meaningful life that comes with maturity. But the resulting story came across as shallow and pretentious - basically, everything creepy playground stalker dad accused Jem of being.

Summary

Lisa Jewell lives in North London. While on holiday a friend made her a drunken bet: dinner at her favourite restaurant if she wrote three chapters of a novel. Just over a year later Ralph's Party was finished. In a similar style to Marian Keyes' Rachel’s Holiday, Ralph’s Party introduces the residents of 31 Almanac Road, a three-storey Edwardian house in South London. The house, divided into flats and its inhabitants are the focus of this contemporary, romantic novel. Ralph and Smith, who live in the basement flat are beginning to doubt that they will ever find a suitable flatmate until Jemima comes along. In fact, Jem finds herself more than suitable when both Ralph and Smith fall for her. Karl and Siobhan live in the flat above and they have been together in total happiness for fifteen years. That was until Cheri, the cold, calculating but very sexy lady in the top flat sets her sights on Karl. These six star-crossed tenants become more enamored, and more confused, as the story progresses-until their true destinies are revealed on one crucial night-the evening of the extravaganza that is . . . Ralph's party. It's also interesting for me in that Ralph's Party was very much set in the approach to 1997, the arse-end of a pretty bad recession and a moribund Tory-led Britain before the expectation of a New Labour victory. This one is set literally after that party. Not exactly that you notice it much in the text -- she's not a political writer or anything of the sort, but it's interesting that she dabbles fleetingly in religion and the spiritual, and even hints that the jollies the central couple used to get was sort of, well, vacuous. The good times are gone. ABOUT THIS BOOK: Meet the residents of the London brownstone on 31 Almanac Road who together weave a tangled web of romance. Ralph, a ne'er-do-well artist, suddenly realizes he's head over heels in love with his new flatmate Jem, the most fun and sensible girl he's ever encountered. Unfortunately, Ralph's best friend, Smith, has already won Jem's affections, although Smith has not entirely given up his passion for the femme fatale, Cheri, who lives upstairs. Across the hall, Karl and Siobhan have been happily unmarried for years, until Karl gets a smashing job as a London rush-hour DJ and momentarily gets tempted into Cheri's cozy lair. I thought this was the latest from Lisa Jewell, as it just was added to my library, but a minute into it the anachronisms (a popular rush hour radio dj?) and then realized Ralph's Party was her first book. It doesn't read like the Jewell I know and I was expecting something creepy or a murder to happen at some point, but instead got some sort of romantic drama. The result was refreshing for my usual reads.

There was some weird descriptions of the fact she’d put on weight and her husband liked it because she ‘felt like a chubby school girl’ and he’d never gotten to sleep with a chubby school girl. The writing flows easily and I enjoyed the portrayal of the characters. They're all immersed in so muc drama: cheating, lying, manipulation, obsession, etc. Most of us have been in some of their roles at some point of our lives, to a minor extent, I hope, but I still have moments where I thought "shit, I've done something like that". This book was rather different to the ones I'd read before; which wasn't a problem at all and I enjoyed it. Though to be honest, I wasn't in love with either of the main characters...Meet the residents of the London brownstone on 31 Almanac Road who together weave a tangled web of romance. Ralph, a ne'er-do-well artist, suddenly realizes he's head over heels in love with his new flatmate Jem, the most fun and sensible girl he's ever encountered. Unfortunately, Ralph's best friend, Smith, has already won Jem's affections, although Smith has not entirely given up his passion for the femme fatale, Cheri, who lives upstairs. Across the hall, Karl and Siobhan have been happily unmarried for years, until Karl gets a smashing job as a London rush-hour DJ and momentarily gets tempted into Cheri's cozy lair. These six star-crossed tenants become more enamored, and more confused, as the story progresses-until their true destinies are revealed on one crucial night-the evening of the extravaganza that is . . . Ralph's party. This wonderfully hip new novel was an instant popular success when it was first published in England, and American readers are sure to be captivated by the debut of a talented new writer. I am still wondering why I thought this might be a good book. Absolutely horrible. Horrible characters, I couldn't like any of them, horrible plot. this novel represents the culmination of days of trying to be a goodreads giveaway winner. thank you, goodreads!



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

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