What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate
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*****
Though I struggled with this book’s timeline, I am ever so glad I stuck with it. After all the pages were turned, I found it to be a terrific book with a terrific message.
The story is set in London and is about Grace Adams, her husband Benjamin, and their teenage daughter, Lotte. Grace and Ben meet when she is twenty-eight and he is a few years younger. They are both very skilled linguists and they meet at a competition for “Polyglot of the Year 2002.”
Grace ultimately wins the competition with a score of 164 while Ben is the runner up at 163 points. Her prize includes a “weekend break for two” at a hotel in Cornwall. Having recently broken up with her boyfriend, and strangely attracted to Ben, she invites him to join her.
We learn all of this in the third chapter of the book called “2002”. The prior chapters were called “Now” and “Four Months Earlier”. The book continues to alternate between chapters of this sort. The chapters named by years go from 2002 to 2018 and the flashback chapters take us to three months and then two months earlier. It’s really very confusing – but worth wrestling with.
In the first “Now” chapter Grace is stuck in stalled traffic on a hot day and she is very agitated. She is late to pick up a special cake of some sort. It’s “the cake she can’t afford but is staking everything on.” Ultimately, she gets out of her car and walks away from it with a blast of horns showing their opinion of her action.
Actually, I almost stopped reading there. Really? Who does that? Who abandons a car in stalled traffic? Is this Grace Adams lady crazy?
In the first flashback chapter, “Four Months Earlier,” Grace receives an email from Lotte’s school informing her that Lotte’s attendance is below 70%. As she knocks on Lotte’s bedroom door to ask about it, a very belligerent teenager is the person with whom she speaks. And so we know that something is up with Lotte. Is it just teenage stuff or is it something more?
The flashback chapters soon prove that somewhere along the line Lotte moves out of Grace’s house to go live with Ben. This brings up so many questions. What happened to the great love that was Ben and Grace? And what caused a rift between mother and daughter that is so great that the daughter moves away?
As we try to figure this out – in the past, in the flashbacks, and in the now – Grace continues to do very weird things such as trashing a pharmacy when the clerk waits on someone else when it was Grace’s turn in line.
I scratched my head at her behavior. Grace Adams is a crazy lady, right?
And then ultimately, we find out what’s eating at all of them.
And everything falls into place and makes sense.
And the moral of the story is that some problems in life are impossible to talk about – even for very gifted linguists. It’s validating for all of us who have harmed a relationship due to some failure to communicate.
With all the pieces in place, all of these characters are very lovable. The reader is left hoping that they can find the necessary words and live happily ever after.
*****
Click here to learn more about Amazing Grace Adams on Amazon.
*****
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