Love Orange - Natasha Randall

 One of the great things about participating in a buddy read is that you get insights to the book from other readers that you might not have considered yourself. It’s fantastic. However, when it comes to writing a review, whose thoughts are you giving voice to? Your own or those of other readers? Big shout out to all my fellow buddy readers. And thanks.

‘An extraordinary debut novel by Natasha Randall, exposing the seam of secrets within an American family, from beneath the plastic surfaces of their new 'smart' home. Love Orange charts the gentle absurdities of their lives, and the devastating consequences of casual choices.

While Hank struggles with his lack of professional success, his wife Jenny, feeling stuck and beset by an urge to do good, becomes ensnared in a dangerous correspondence with a prison inmate called John. Letter by letter, John pinches Jenny awake from the "marshmallow numbness" of her life. The children, meanwhile, unwittingly disturb the foundations of their home life with forays into the dark net and strange geological experiments.

Jenny's bid for freedom takes a sour turn when she becomes the go-between for John and his wife, and develops an unnatural obsession for the orange glue that seals his letters...

Love Orange throws open the blinds of American life, showing a family facing up to the modern age, from the ascendancy of technology, the predicaments of masculinity, the pathologising of children, the epidemic of opioid addiction and the tyranny of the WhatsApp Gods. The first novel by the acclaimed translator is a comic cocktail, an exuberant skewering of contemporary anxieties and prejudices.”

Thus spakes the Blurb. Love Orange is the debut novel from Natasha Randall. I must emphasise that it is a debut novel because when you read it you feel like you are reading the work of an experienced, mature novelist. It is piercingly contemporary, examining the rise of SMART technology within our lives, the social media whatssup/ whatsapp age alongside the eternal themes of what it is to be male, female, a parent, a partner, a child  and what drug addiction can do to an individual. And then there’s religion too. Quite a heady mix for a reader.

The prose is sparkly and witty. The narrative has a pleasing, even flow which carries the reader along willingly with it. The writer demonstrates an acute understanding of people and their motivations and insecurities. She understands, so very well, the wisdom of children which, all too often, the arrogant adult underestimates. All the characters are well defined, people you feel you could identify if you met them in the street. Characters you warm to, characters who irritate you but as the novel unfolds your sympathies and understanding is drawn out of you, sometimes reluctantly, like the squeezing of the last dregs from a toothpaste tube.

The Tinckleys present initially as a dysfunctional family. Four individuals in their own little bubbles, all desperate to fit in and conform but failing on one level or another. Yet all of them in their own way are trying to claw their way out of this slough of despond that they find themselves in. Hank with his misplaced new age philosophies and skewed ideas about parenting, Jesse with his computer games, Luke with his desperate search for the origins of everything and Jenny reaching out to somebody who she perceives is in direr straits than herself yet maybe turns out to be something of a catalyst for her. It all makes for a powerful and moving novel.

My favourite character was eight-year-old Luke. His openness and his logic were refreshing. He grabbed at my heart. His older brother Jesse wasn’t far behind. There is a wonderful passage with the boys in the car with their mum and they display such mature and pertinent insights it fair took my breath away. Jenny asks them if they think that being normal is a good thing Luke says, ‘you don’t want to be abnormal.’ and Jesse says, ‘you can be normal and special.’ - absolutely incredible. The kids are wiser than the parent.  Thankfully Jenny acknowledges their clarity.

But the adult characters were all relatable. Somehow this author just manages to get under the skin of each of them and evoke their insecurities in a way which is both witty yet poignant. She even presents us with a man of God who shows himself to be as human as us all and not the somewhat stereotypical and self righteous character who can populate our psyche. Father Brian is another pivotal character driven to be who he thinks people want him to be and struggling, like the others, to be himself. Arguably John and Shona are the most “normal” characters in the book. Which is a wonderful paradox given their situations.

This is not a book where I want to divulge great chunks of what happens in the plot. That would be a disservice. For it’s a joy for the reader to see what unfolds. And of course what eventually transpires is unexpected. Not a big dramatic, attention seeking unexpected, but a ‘Well, I’ll be darned’ kinda unexpected.

Published by Quercus which seems so fitting since it is a ‘quirky’ book! Thanks for my gifted copy and thanks for the opportunity to enjoy it as a buddy read.