Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
After a pretty intense and very long season of writing, it has been a joy to read purely, purely for pleasure and what better book to start with than this, Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. I read this over the Easter holidays and it was simply joyous. I’m a huge Curtis Sittenfeld fan (and still have my copy of Prep from about, god, twenty years ago) and almost all of my copies of her books are dog-eared; pages turned down, sentences underlined, exclamation marks in the blank spaces of the pages when something has just been pitch perfect or simply funny. Romantic Comedy is no exception.
Romantic Comedy: the blurb
Romantic Comedy is the story of Sally Milz, a successful script writer for a legendary late night television show called The Night Owls (TNO, inspired by Saturday Night Live). Sally is divorced, and wary of romantic attachments. She is guarded, after having made some mistakes, somehow ending up married to a man she had nothing in common with, and then falling in love with someone who did not at all fall the same way. But she’s not hapless. She’s very clever, very successful, well-paid, confident in her writing and not at all desperate to fall in love either (which is actually very refreshing to read). The book is centred around Sally’s observation that average-looking men somehow end up with above average-looking, beautiful, accomplished women, but that the reverse rarely happens for the so-called average woman. Sally turns this ‘social rule’ into a comedy sketch for TNO and though she makes it into a joke, she obviously believes herself to be ‘average’ when really, she isn’t. Then she meets Noah, a pop idol with a reputation for dating models. She kind of judges him on this, but at the same time, she’s pretty sure they’ve got some chemistry. But would a guy like him ever date her? Could the social rule ever be reversed?
Tender, witty and entertaining
What I loved so much about Romantic Comedy is that it’s a clever and incredibly funny novel about love that somehow feels wholesome and joyous while also being very modern. Yes, it could potentially raise all sorts of questions about media, the cult of celebrity, self-perception, self-doubt; and you could absolutely choose to read it that way, like some sort of commentary, if you wanted to. But I chose to read it simply as a joyous book about two people falling in love; it’s tender, witty and above all entertaining. I found myself rooting for Sally and the ending was just pitch perfect.
The novel is split into three parts, and the middle part is a modern take on an epistolary form - a whole section of emails back and forth between Sally and Noah. I loved reading these emails! Maybe it’s because I too fell in love over email, the kind of brilliantly long lengthy emails where you talk about the tiny details of your day and you respond to each other line by line and nothing feels insignificant and all of it feels like something; the emails you get butterflies in your stomach for, that make you feel dizzy when you sit down and open them. Curtis captured all of this so beautifully, warmly and so realistically. There may well be people who might read the emails and say: ‘yeah, but people don’t send emails like that anymore.’ People do. They really do.
I’ve spent a lot of time reading very heavy, very serious literary fiction and really, it’s been so refreshing to read characters who are good people, not perfect, still with all their flaws and judgements and insecurities, but still good, nice, decent people. There are many kinds of love that are celebrated in Romantic Comedy; romantic, but also the love of friendship and parents and neighbours and though this isn’t a ‘light’ book and isn’t really a ‘romantic comedy’ in the way that the title might suggest either, it’s all still very celebratory in a real life kind of way.
Curtis Sittenfeld in conversation on writing and love
I was also lucky enough to hear Curtis Sittenfeld talk in conversation with Natasha Lunn, author of Conversations on Love at the Charlotte Street Hotel, a book event organised by BookBar. I sat in the front row and soaked in every word. It’s always so delightful to hear authors talk about their own work, and I loved hearing Curtis say how much she needed to write a novel that was fun, and felt joyous. She wrote it during the pandemic and described the writing process as an escape - it needed to be something lovely for her to return to again and again. She’s so funny when she talks! She talked a lot about Pete Davidson, mentioned her love for romantic comedies and cheesy music, Saturday Night Live and Jane Austen. She also touched a little in passing on her writing process, and talked about how her drafts are messy, entire sections she could just not look at, likening them to a very messy room that you’re too embarrassed to go into and can’t quite believe you’ve let get into such a state.
Curtis also quoted Ann Patchett, as having said:
‘Writing is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.’
I laughed when she said that your imaginary friend really can be warm and friendly and nice, and not intense and sad and melancholy. It was a reminder that beautifully crafted literary writing does not always have to mean heavy, serious, melodramatic writing, and that there is always room for a lightness of touch, comedy and indeed, romance.
More reading / listening
I love Hattie Crisell’s podcast, In Writing with Hattie Crisell, and her interview with Curtis Sittenfeld is so insightful (it was recorded in 2020) as Curtis shares her writing process and her journey to becoming a writer. She talks about how she always starts writing by reading the last line she wrote the day before and then picking up from there; she shares her insight into outlining and structuring a book and how to set yourself up for writing success. You can listen to the interview here.
‘I feel like there are so many problems in the world and I think there is very little that I feel that I can personally do about most of them, so I really want to write a book that someone enjoys.’ Yes! I love this interview with Curtis Sittenfeld in The Bookseller, discussing romance, why we need something light and cheerful and the power of comedy.
If you enjoyed this blog, you might enjoy this post on Comfort Reading with Katherine Heiny
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