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<\/p>\nNever go out with a journalist. Sure, they may have promised to cook dinner, but when a story breaks, that\u2019s it \u2014 all plans are off. And political journalists are the worst offenders.<\/p>\n
Consider Yourself Kissed (bear with it, it\u2019s 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, \u201ctrying to be funny\u201d about \u201clife and death\u201d politics, and his girlfriend, our heroine Coralie, struggles to remember why she fell in love with him. His all-consuming career makes her feel \u201clike a widow without the sympathy\u201d 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 \u2014 can their relationship survive his ambition?<\/p>\n
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It starts so romantically. When we meet Coralie, she\u2019s 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 \u201cidentified as a contrarian\u201d 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\u2019s father, Adam, looks like a shorter Colin Firth. <\/p>\n
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\u2019s favourite novelists, Alan Hollinghurst (she describes herself as an \u201cAlan-head\u201d), and his influence is here too. This is social comedy with a dash of politics \u2014 Adam\u2019s ex-wife\u2019s new husband, for instance, is a self-hating Conservative MP who is bashful about Brexit<\/a> and wears expensive loafers that stand out in Hackney.<\/p>\n The book is jam-packed with contemporary references \u2014 Coralie envies Ed Miliband<\/a> his two kitchens and speculates that her millennial younger brother lives in \u201ca Sally Rooney scenario: thin brunettes eating a single orange, messaging each other about socialism\u201d. <\/p>\n 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\u2019t follow up saying he\u2019s a journalist with the cringe-inducing phrase \u201cfor my sins\u201d (right on cue, he does). He\u2019s never cruel, rather just thoughtless, and unable to understand that she needs more than a few hours off childcare here and there.<\/p>\n It\u2019s 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 \u201cmama\u201d, her dread of using a breast pump and the deluge of birth advice from unqualified influencers on Instagram. <\/p>\n \u2022 What we\u2019re reading this week \u2014 by the Times books team<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n If I have a criticism of this deeply enjoyable book it\u2019s that the politics occasionally feels shoehorned in. I found myself comparing it with Elizabeth Jane Howard\u2019s Cazalet Chronicles<\/a>, which manages to entwine the events of the Second World War with daily life. But events from 2013 until 2023 weren\u2019t always so riveting (despite what Adam thinks). Personally, I\u2019d rather not relive David Cameron<\/a> forgetting which football team he supports. <\/p>\n But Stanley redeems this with her on-the-nose observations about relationships. When Adam is at his worst, defending himself by saying he does \u201csome baths! I do some bedtimes\u201d, she thinks: \u201cHaving a baby is the nice bit, it\u2019s having a husband I can\u2019t stand.\u201d If you spot a woman chuckling in grim acknowledgment at a book this summer, chances are it will be this.<\/p>\n