Review: Welcome to the Great Mysterious by Lorna Landvik

Well, hello there, deja vu. It was only a few weeks ago that I was reviewing Louise Limericks'Lucindas Whirlwind, a novel about a career-minded aunt called in as a last-minute caretaker after her sister has jet-set off overseas, and here I am reviewing a book that covers some very similar ground. Mysterious how these things work, isnt it?

Disclaimer: protagonist Geneva Jordan and I didnt quite get off on the right foot. Proclaiming yourself to be a diva in your opening line isnt necessarily a good way to make friends. Nor is continuing your divaish ways around people who arent getting paid to hang around you. In fact, even as the heart-swelling strings play on through the final act, Geneva never really eschews her love-me-Im-famous ways. I should have been the one downing her doubles. Now, I get the over-the-top humour and amusingly inflated narcissism thats at play here, but it didnt ring true to me. Theres something missing in Landviks comic voice and timing that feels'off'somehow. I think its that everything here is so bold and brash and overstatedwhich I suppose is that youd expect from a protagonist whos a Broadway star, but which meant that all I heard in my head for several hundred pages was Fran Drescher.

Anyway, Geneva might be a star, but shes one whos starting to fade: middle age has hit, and neither her employer nor her sort-of love interest are quite as into Geneva as they once were. So when Genevas sister Ann calls to ask her to babysit while Ann and her husband take a much-needed break in Italy, Geneva grudgingly agrees. It would be your classic fish-out-of-water story, particularly given that Genevas nephew is a young boy with Down syndrome and requires special care and attention, but Geneva slips into the surrogate parent role with vim. Her laissez faire approach to child-rearing seems to work fairly well with her nephew, and her relationship with him and the close-knit community of Deep Lake, Minnesota. Its all jokes, ice-cream for dinner, and church gatherings, and you get a sense that Landviks heart is very much in the Midwest.

The novel largely follows a fairly predictable route: a love triangle involving the local postie from Deep Lake and Genevas womanising ex-beau and a tear-jerker subplot about her nephew and one of his friends, and the ending wont surprise you in the least. What saves the book is the Great Mysterious of the title, a name that refers to a question-and-answer book Geneva and her sister put together when they were young girls, and which is filled with deep questions about various aspects of lifeand their various family members responses to those questions. Its quite a lovely idea, and in a lot of the ways it carries an otherwise unremarkable novel.

But Genevas brassiness and her bizarre life decisionsthese seem motivated not by her character, but by the demands of the plotreally undermine any sense of poignancy or depth that might be lurking in these pages. Genevas the kind of person whod laugh at a funeral, but the way that this book is written has a similarly awkward feel to it as well. The weird, braying humour often seems out of place, and every now and then well get quite a serious scene that feels like it doesnt gel with the rest of the book. An example is the scene where Genevas nephew, to her terrible discomfort and fear, tries to climb into bed with her for solace. Its quite a powerful scene, but it just feels wrong somehow.

I think whether you enjoy this one will have a lot to do with whether you connect with Geneva and can tolerate the pretty frightful love triangle that permeates the book (oh, poor postie man, how you suffer for your love). For me, this one felt drawn out and mawkish, and I didnt feel it went much beyond a paint-by-numbers approach. Oh, and dont let that cover mislead you: this book is firmly set during the present.

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