Never go out with a journalist. Sure, they may have promised to cook dinner, but when a story breaks, that’s it — all plans are off. And political journalists are the worst offenders.
Consider Yourself Kissed (bear with it, it’s less frothy than the title suggests) follows a couple over ten years, from 2013 to 2023, as Adam gets his dream job at The Times, “trying to be funny” about “life and death” politics, and his girlfriend, our heroine Coralie, struggles to remember why she fell in love with him. His all-consuming career makes her feel “like a widow without the sympathy” as she brings up their two children and his daughter from his first marriage. This is a man who describes being on The Andrew Marr Show as the best day of his life — can their relationship survive his ambition?
It starts so romantically. When we meet Coralie, she’s a 29-year-old copywriter who has recently moved to London with vague plans to write a novel and is fed up with going on bad dates (the last was with an agronomist who “identified as a contrarian” and wore a full Tour de France cycling kit to dinner). One day she sees a little girl face down in the pond in the park and dives in to rescue her, emerging like a female Mr Darcy. Fittingly, the girl’s father, Adam, looks like a shorter Colin Firth.
Like Coralie, the author Jessica Stanley is an Australian who has migrated to east London. This is her second novel, after a 2022 debut about the death of a fictional union leader, John Clare, that was published only in Australia. It was inspired by one of Stanley’s favourite novelists, Alan Hollinghurst (she describes herself as an “Alan-head”), and his influence is here too. This is social comedy with a dash of politics — Adam’s ex-wife’s new husband, for instance, is a self-hating Conservative MP who is bashful about Brexit and wears expensive loafers that stand out in Hackney.
The book is jam-packed with contemporary references — Coralie envies Ed Miliband his two kitchens and speculates that her millennial younger brother lives in “a Sally Rooney scenario: thin brunettes eating a single orange, messaging each other about socialism”.
Stanley writes with a gentle, easy humour. She captures that first flush of love, when Coralie feels totally understood by Adam, but is equally convincing on how difficult it is to stay in love, especially when you know someone so well you can predict exactly how they are going to be irritating. At a party, for example, she silently hopes Adam won’t follow up saying he’s a journalist with the cringe-inducing phrase “for my sins” (right on cue, he does). He’s never cruel, rather just thoughtless, and unable to understand that she needs more than a few hours off childcare here and there.
It’s refreshing to read a depiction of motherhood that acknowledges both the incomparable love it brings and the strain it puts on relationships, especially when one person feels like they are doing all the nose-wiping. I nodded in recognition at Coralie laughing at the nursery staff calling her “mama”, her dread of using a breast pump and the deluge of birth advice from unqualified influencers on Instagram.
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If I have a criticism of this deeply enjoyable book it’s that the politics occasionally feels shoehorned in. I found myself comparing it with Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles, which manages to entwine the events of the Second World War with daily life. But events from 2013 until 2023 weren’t always so riveting (despite what Adam thinks). Personally, I’d rather not relive David Cameron forgetting which football team he supports.
But Stanley redeems this with her on-the-nose observations about relationships. When Adam is at his worst, defending himself by saying he does “some baths! I do some bedtimes”, she thinks: “Having a baby is the nice bit, it’s having a husband I can’t stand.” If you spot a woman chuckling in grim acknowledgment at a book this summer, chances are it will be this.
Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley (Hutchinson Heinemann £16.99 pp352). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members