Monday, February 7, 2011

Review: The Last Letter From Your Lover - Jojo Moyes


Ellie Haworth is in her early thirties, a features writer for London's The Nation and is in love with a married man. Her life has become consumed by trying to dissect brief text messages from her lover. Her work is suffering because of her obsession and she is in very real danger of losing her job. Her boss has given her one last task to redeem herself: sift through countless random documents found in the paper's archives from forty years ago and write a story comparing life in the sixties to now. Amongst the papers, Ellie finds a passionate love letter and finds herself caught up in a story bigger than she could imagine.

Jennifer Stirling is a preened and perfect 60s housewife of a wealthy businessman who has just survived a horrible car accident, which has left her with holes in her memory and strained feelings towards her husband. One day she discovers a letter that reveals she has a secret lover and becomes consumed with rediscovering his identity.

I was surprised how much I loved this book. Moyes has managed to perfect the balance between bittersweet moments and romance to leave me utterly satisfied. Each chapter begins with a break-up message from varying generations and the difference in language (and lack of tact) is amusing. Sometimes, it's unbelievably satisfying to read a nice love story. The only criticism I have is that the book is poorly edited - frequent obvious typos make it seem like the book was edited with spell check. I'm not normally a person who would critique a book purely on typos, but these were too frequent to ignore. However, as someone with an editing background, I know this might not necessarily mean a sloppy editor but constraints on time and budgets. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to enjoy some light reading with heart.

4/5

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