Sundays at Tiffany’s by James Patterson and Gabrielle
Charbonnet
Read by Ellen Archer
Reading level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy / Romance
Audio: 5 hours, 8
minutes (paperback is 336 pages)
As a little girl, Jane has no one. Her mother Vivienne
Margaux, the powerful head of a major New York theater company has no time for
her. But she does have one friend--Michael--and no one can see him but her. But
Michael can't stay with Jane forever, and on her ninth birthday, her imaginary
friend must leave her.
When Jane is in her thirties, working for her mother's
company, she is just as alone as she was as a child. Her boyfriend hardly knows
she's there and is more interested in what Vivienne can do for his career. Her
mother practically treats her as a slave in the office, despite the great
success of Jane's first play, "Thank Heaven." Then she finds Michael
– handsome, and just the same as she remembers him, only now he's not
imaginary. For once in her life, Jane is happy and has someone who loves her
back. But not even Michael knows the reason behind why they've really been
reunited.
Sundays at Tiffany’s was actually my book club’s reading choice
for January. We’ll meet the first week of February to discuss it… and oh what a
discussion it ought to be. My book club met the first week of January and chose
books for the first six months (yes, there will be reviews on all of them). No
one had read Sundays at Tiffany’s, but one of us had seen it on a list of
recommendations for book clubs. The premise sounded interesting, so we decided
to read it first. In fact, knowing James Patterson from his Witch & Wizard
series, I was rather excited and went home to look it up that night.
Now, I didn’t sit down and physically read this book. My
state has an online library, and they had an audio copy. Knowing that I had a
lot of New Year cleaning and organizing ahead of me, I decided that would be a
perfect way to “read” that month’s book.
The books has two authors and I suspect that’s why it has
two Points of View (POV). Chapters about Jane are told in first person by Jane.
Chapters about Michael are told in third person limited omniscient POV with
access to Michael’s thoughts. I don’t know how annoying this switch would be
while reading, but with the continuity Ellen Archer’s reading, it didn’t bother
me.
Anyone who has listened to audio books knows that the reader
can enhance or destroy a novel. I was a little leery when I began, but Ellen
Archer is an excellent performer. She handles the POV switch very deftly and
reads with the right amount of emotion. My one problem with her reading was when some people “spoke.” Her
nameless men morphed into one being, but since they were scarce, it wasn’t too
much of problem. It was, however, really annoying to hear the adult Jane speak
to Michael. When she did, it was in the same higher-pitched voice that she used
for the eight-year-old Jane. The little feminist in me cringed that a smart,
intelligent woman had to resort to a child’s voice with the man she loves, and
it really threw me out of the story. Despite that, I would not mind listening to her read again.
Now for the actual book…
This is Chic Lit, plain and simple. It consists of your
basic Chic Flic formula transformed into words: underappreciated girl has bad
relationships, she connects with the man of her dreams, angst ensues, something
(usually their own stupid behavior) drives them apart toward the end, but
somehow they reconnect and we are treated to a glimpse of their
happily-ever-after. This follows that to point of cliché at times. The premise
is fun, but it isn’t really explored beyond that. No questions (Jane even asks
the ones that most of the readers will have) are ever answered. Sadly, this
makes that cool premise into a gimmick that wasn’t thoroughly thought out. Jane
and Michael are the only characters who have depth (except for a short attempt
at it with Vivienne at the end). Everyone else is a caricature. Granted, this
is very normal in the Chic Lit/Flic genre, so it's not without precedent.
On the whole it isn’t a bad story. It’s just the sort of
thing that is great for a lazy afternoon read when you want to escape and enjoy
a modern fairy tale. However, I’m not going to recommend it.
Why? The same reason that I suspect that we’ll have a new
rule about someone actually having READ the novels that we choose: language and
sex. I’m glad that this is a book that I listened to after the children had
gone to bed because the “F-bomb” was dropped on several occasions. While I have trained
my brain to skip over any offensive language, it’s not so easy to skip
it when it’s being yelled as you listen. Also, there is sex. I’m not a fan of
sex scenes (that could be a post on its own). You can see this one coming and
skip it if you want, but I didn’t feel it was necessary. A “screen wipe” would
have been just as adequate. In fact, it’s like horror… each woman could have
imagined a more romantic and sensual scene because it would have been tailored
to her specific desires. In the end, it turned a fun, “pulp” read into trash.
The rest of the book wasn’t stellar enough to combat it.
In the end it was good, but a disappointment.
