Book Review: Love Walked In

Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos

I think my opinion of this book was colored by the last book I read. The last book I read was about manly men who kill people for a living, live rough, and try not to think about the futility of it. This book is about women and girls who spend a great deal of time analyzing feelings, get upset over the littlest things,  and spend a great deal of time trying to make other people happy. It’s hard to get wrapped up in the plot when no one’s life is on the line.

This book passes the Bechdel test in that it’s about love but a different kind of love, the parental kind a woman has for a child. Cornelia’s life alters forever when Martin Grace, the Cary Grant look-alike, walks into the cafe she works at and starts to date her. They do all the things dating people do in novels, that is, they have witty exchanges and cook extravagantly described meals for one another in their lovely little apartments. But, as the cover may tell you, the story isn’t about the love Cornelia has for Martin, but for the love Cornelia has for Martin’s daughter Clare, lost and alone and needing someone to care for her.

This novel deals with feelings. This novel deals with emotions, and subtle emotional undercurrents so deeply and intensely that it’s as if all other novels have a filter that removes all but 30% of what’s really happening. Or less. I have to wonder how this book would be to a person (okay, a man) who doesn’t ever notice or pay attention to people’s emotions. It would be like a human reading a story written by a Bassett Hound, and wondering why the dog author spent so much time discussing scents.  In many novels (and, I suspect, in many lives) the emotional world described in this book simply DOESN’T EXIST.  What would it feel like to read this book if you are one of those people who don’t notice emotional landscapes?  Would it be an interesting viewpoint into another way of seeing the world, or would you just think the author was making it up, that no one really can tell if one person is in love with another person by listening to the way they answer the phone? I am curious.

Be forewarned, the men in this book largely do not act like real men, but like the way women want men to act. They tend to proclaim their love and do thoughtful things and generally care more about the women than about their own selfish desires. Call me cynical, but for most men, maintaining and thinking about their relationships consists of maybe 15-20% of their life, not 95%.

I like the idea that it was a different sort of love story. The love a person (but especially a woman) has for a child is stronger than romantic love, and basing the story off of that is a nice twist. It’s cute, and it’s happy. What this story reminded me most of was the story I read as a child, THE FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS in that they have obstacles to overcome, but you’re pretty sure from the beginning that it will all end happily for the heroine.

Which brings me to the part I liked least about this book. Cornelia’s life really doesn’t have much in the way of challenges. Sure, bad stuff happens, but mostly it happens to her benefit. It’s like reading about the struggles of a B+ student who manages to raise her grade to an A. Cornelia has everything handed to her. Also, while it’s slightly refreshing to read a novel in which nearly every single person in the book acts more neurotic than I am, after a certain point, I kind of wanted to tell Cornelia to suck it up a little bit. So Clare had to buy her own milk. She wasn’t tortured, quit wringing your handkerchief.

I have to wonder if maybe part of my issue with how the characters behaved is a cultural thing. They seem to care a very great deal about how other people will think of them. They arrange their lives around it, in fact.  Is that an east coast thing? I can flail and fret needlessly with the best of them, but compared to these people, I’m as implacable as a petrified tortoise. I just wanted to give them all some Xanax and tell them to chill out, that no one cares how you live your life, and if they do care, it’s none of their business.

This book feels a bit pink and fluffy to me.  Everyone is all about being nice to one another and being friendly to one another, and love is the very best thing. Refreshing, I guess, but it got a little sickly sweet after a while. There’s no violence, and no one even really gets into an argument. The main plot point seems to be, will Clare’s mother come back and take Clare away from Cornelia, but after a while Cornelia irritated me and I stopped caring. At some point, too many things fell into her lap and she ceased to be the plucky heroine and started being the wish-fulfillment girl. I also found it just a wee bit creepy how people died only to make her life more convenient. I had hoped that this would be the kind of novel where we find out she is able to kill people with her mind, but–spoiler alert–she can’t. She doesn’t murder anyone. She just goes along being her perfect little self, and everyone rearranges their life to give her what she wants.

I recommend this for people who want a book with a happy ending, for people who want a book with no violence or swearing, and for people who find women baffling and want proof that we are alien.

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