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Book Review:
Ask Again Later, Jill A. Davis
Emily has a tendency to live with one foot out the door. For her, the best thing about a family crisis is the excuse to cut and run. When her mother dramatically announces they've found a lump, Emily gladly takes a rain check on life to be by her mother's side, leaving behind her career, her boyfriend, and those pesky, unanswerable questions about who she is and what she's doing with her life.
ASK AGAIN LATER
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Publishing Date: January 29, 2008But back in her childhood bedroom, Emily realizes that she hasn't run fast or far enough. One evening, while her mother calls everyone in her Rolodex to brief them on her medical crisis and schedule a farewell martini, Emily opens the door, quite literally, to find her past staring her in the face. How do you forge a relationship with the father who left when you were five years old? As Emily attempts to find balance on the emotional see-saw of her life with the help of two hopeful suitors and her Park Avenue princess sister, she takes a no-risk job as a receptionist at his law firm and slowly gets to know the man she once pretended was dead.
We all know that chick lit books aren’t exactly Dostoevsky, but they do often provide mindless distraction from our every day lives and almost always guarantee a happy ending. But after the success of the groundbreaking Bridget Jones’ Diary, it seemed like hundreds of cookie-cutter novels were appearing at our local Chapters’ discount shelves. Suddenly, reading chick lit – with its predefined conventions of a quirky heroine bogged down by self-esteem issues as she struggles with misfortunes, crazy parents, and finding love – never seemed so tedious. And let's not forget about the gaggle of tight-knit friends, including the token gay guy, providing commentary from the peanut gallery as she navigates through a chapter in her life. In fact, if you substitute the main character’s name for your own and use macros in Microsoft Word, you could probably publish a chick lit book in a matter of weeks.
Ask Again Later doesn’t steer far from the standard fare, but it does one better by focusing on character development with painstakingly detail. Jill A. Davis’ Emily is far from perfect; she has chronic issues with commitment, can’t seem to deal with any of the hurdles in her life without running away, and has an acerbic wit that borders on neurotic. Despite it all, she’s highly likeable – and she’s real. Davis has succeeded in crafting a damaged main character that almost leaps off the page. She could be the friend you knew in university, or the sister you just don’t seem to get, or even in some ways, a reflection of us. Davis explores every one of Emily’s flaws, transforming her from a two-dimensional walking formula into a relatable, nuanced character…even if she does has a gay best friend, a zany mother, and a perfect but somehow unattainable love interest.
The story itself chugs along slowly, and starts when Emily receives the news that her outrageous, self-involved mother has breast cancer. She uses this as an excuse to suspend her life and go into hiding, quitting her cushy but soul-sucking lawyerly job and postponing her on-again, off-again relationship with resident hunk and recent divorcee Sam. Emily can’t quite believe her eyes when her estranged father, absent for over twenty years, appears by her mother’s side. But despite previous misgivings, she decides to get to know him in the hopes of learning something about herself in the process.
As the book progresses, Emily’s life slowly starts to unravel. Issues with her mother are explored as both women cope with the impending surgery and treatment, and use midday cocktails and soap operas as a substitute for real bonding. Similarly, Emily’s relationship with her older sister, a socialite mother-to-be who has alienated herself from her immediate family and is flippantly obsessed with forgetting her previous life, is also examined with one-line quips and references to childhood memories.
But the bulk of the book features the two relationships that Emily can’t commit to: her newfound discovery of her father, and her cautious relationship with Sam. In the former, Davis paints a realistic portrait of a woman who wants to love her father but doesn’t know how. It’s the interactions that Emily has with her father, and the small but important ways that she begins to know him, that make this book compelling. Even with a short excerpt about being in her father’s apartment for the first time, Davis manages to pack a great deal of insight into an otherwise mundane event. Through Davis’ eyes, commonplace, ordinary events in Emily’s life are rarely as shallow as they first appear. Even an office party can provide insight: ”I sit down on a swivel chair. I peel the label off the beer bottle. It’s an undocumented symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder. I think about crafting a letter to a psychological journal and letting them know about the label-peeling thing. I decide I’ll write it first thing tomorrow. I’ll put it on the firm’s letterhead so it might be received with more excitement and regard.”
In comparison to her father’s relationship, Emily’s connection with Sam, and its inevitable trajectory, is often predictable and soon becomes one-note. Indeed, there is little to be gleamed from Sam’s character outside of the fact that he’s a) a very patient man; and b) a very patient man. There aren’t many people – real or fictional – that possess the fortitude that Sam has, and there is very little to convince readers that Emily and Sam’s relationship, or the culmination of it, is worth waiting for. In some ways, Sam is more of a metaphor than a love interest.
Davis also makes several references to Emily’s relationship with her shrink, Paul. Unfortunately, the sessions discussed in the novel seem to have more to do with highlighting Emily’s increasing issues than actually providing any analysis into Emily’s thought processes. Like Sam, Paul rarely adds anything to the story, and conversations between the two are often one-sided as Emily usually ends up, one way or another, answering her own questions. The only silver lining is that, through Emily and Paul’s interactions, we get to learn more about Emily’s life. In a way, Paul is to exposition what Sam is to metaphors.
There’s no denying, however, that Davis possesses a clear and sharp wit that translates well into character study. Overall, the novel is well written and infused with just the right amount of dry humour and sharp observation that lends a unique voice to the story. Davis, who previously worked as a writer for “The Late Show with David Letterman,” exhibits a natural talent for introspective story telling.
It’s very hard to find a book that superficially appears to be a throwaway chick lit book and ends up debunking preconceived perceptions by its second page. And it’s hard to find such a book that can be both insightful, funny, and break your heart with little to no pretense. In Ask Again Later, Davis manages all of the above.
Although the pacing of the book and the initial jump from present to past may be a little disconnected, Ask Again Later has all the elements of a good read. And like any good story, the pieces eventually fall into place. ¤ C.Ho.
ASK AGAIN LATER:
(out of 5)