TEST
Beth Morrey’s The Love Story of Missy Carmichael is a well-realized character study with a firm, brash, non-soppy narrative tone that draws the reader right in and keeps them close at heart, but it left me with a few reservations.
Stoke Newington resident Mrs. Millicent “Missy” Carmichael is a seventy-nine-year-old woman who keeps to herself. Caring for her husband, Leo, who has a degenerative condition that is never named but feels akin to Alzheimer’s, has nearly bankrupted her; she’s recently estranged from her always-stormy daughter, Melanie, and her son Alistair – whom she clearly favors – and grandson Arthur live in Australia, where Alistair maintains a farm with a wife whom Missy blames for his absence. She sees Alistair and Arthur once a year at Christmas for two weeks at a time and tries to content herself with that.
Much of Missy’s time is spent alone with her sherry, checking the obituaries via her laptop, occasionally leaving the house so she can think of interesting topics for her emails and Skype calls to Arthur and Alistair, and scrubbing the house with her cleaning supplies. Even so, the place is too big for one person and is falling down around her ears. Missy’s closest companions are her memories, many of them bitter. Her life takes a new direction when she’s out at an event to provide something newsworthy for her next Skype call to Australia, and faints.
The two women who help her up – brassy single mother, journalist and dog-lover Angela, and baker Sylvie – soon try to spark up a friendship with the reluctant Missy. Angela, who had a large number of dogs with her at the event, gives Missy one of them as a birthday present, and Missy names that dog Bob and begins to foster a real relationship with this new family member. Bit by bit, Bob, Sylvie, Angela, and Angela’s young son Otis, draw Missy out of her shell, encouraging her to become a part of the town and the world around her. But can Missy move on, accepting her son’s choice to live far from her, and finally confront Melanie about an awful fight which caused an unthinkable revelation?
Rating The Love Story of Missy Carmichael is a difficult task for me. While the strong story and narrative voice compelled me, I was also repelled by Missy’s self-centerednesss. That is what makes a character great, I do suppose – their imperfections. But she could sometimes be a chore to spend time with, her desperate need for control incredibly uncomfortable to endure.
Missy is one of those women who is forever trying to live a cool, calm and collected life, one devoid of real passion. More than anything else, the novel is actually about her learning how to value female friendships and her relationships with women – but for the majority of it she remains obsessed with the men in her life – her son and her husband – and with a long-ago decision that continues to haunt her and which has informed many of her subsequent life choices.
Yes, Missy’s biggest regret is having an abortion so she could continue her college career, which is a subject some people who have had abortions themselves will greet either with chagrin or sympathy. While I feel the book’s treatment of abortion is sympathetic and true to Missy’s character, some readers may be uncomfortable with how heavily her regret taints her treatment of her two other children and her marriage
All of this is ugly business – don’t be fooled by the fluffy art of a dog and old lady on the cover. For the most part, this is not a soft and sweet story at all, and although the ending and certain patches have a sweetness to them, those are unlikely to endear readers to Missy unless they can keep pushing through the first quarter of the story. But once she begins to venture and reach out – and realize that she needs to forgive herself, and not that she needs Leo’s forgiveness – she grows warmer, and the reader will likely soften towards her.
The setting bounces between Newnam College, Cambridge in the early fifties (Missy and Leo attend and meet at the St. Boltoph’s Review party where Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes), Missy and Leo’s married lives, and the present. Morrey captures both the priggish collegiate life of the 1950s and the modern world well.
In the end, while it’s not quite the fluffy read the book cover promises, the growth of Missy and the way she struggles through life earns The Love Story of Missy Carmichael a qualified recommendation.
Note: This novel contains mention of abortion, emotional abuse and the bloody death of a pet.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent retailer
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Grade: B-
Book Type: Fiction
Sensuality: Subtle
Review Date: 19/06/21
Publication Date: 04/2021
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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Bloody death of a pet?! Hell no.
Yep
Again, I don’t know why they’re selling this as a fluffy book.
Lisa, I get confused – easy for me – but I’d have called this Women’s Fiction. An arc of personal growth. And some of currently named Women’s Fiction I’d have called CR – because of a “warm” rating. Are “Women’s Fiction” categories ever suggested by the author or publisher?
Penguin, the book’s American publisher, lists this under both Women’s Fiction and Fiction: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/609599/the-love-story-of-missy-carmichael-by-beth-morrey/.
Honestly, it all depends on how the publisher wants to market things.
Thank you. That’s what I thought.
I think most of the time the categories would be set by the publisher – but once Amazon does its thing, who knows? I’ve seen some really weird categorisations there! But we generally like to give just one category on our reviews to try to make it easier for people to decide on whether they want to read the book or not – and that can be tricky for books like this one, where the lines are clearly blurred.