51 pages • 1 hour read
Emily HenryBook Lovers
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Challenging Romance Novel Archetypes
From the outset, Henry directly addresses a reader who is aware of Book Lovers as a romance novel and has a set of expectations of how the characters will be and the plot will unfold. Nora, the first-person narrator, also demonstrates consciousness of the literary genre, because she immediately denounces herself as the antiheroine in “the small-town love story” where a cynical urban hero travels to a rural place to destroy it and then meets and falls in love with an innocent country girl who transforms him and makes him forget his cold, citified girlfriend (1). However, while Nora’s career ambitions and need for order align her with the stereotype, her love of the city, particular tastes, and sense of humor make her relatable to readers who love romance novels but have their feet in the real world. Nora, with her devotion to books and a 10-step skincare routine, appears fully fleshed out and human, whereas the woman her partner leaves her for, a girl named Chastity, is a briefly sketched, outdated caricature of the romantic heroine, beginning with the old-fashioned name that testifies to the conservative expectation of being untouched and chaste. The name Chastity not only alludes to sexual purity but also to a lack of experience with the wider world.
Nora also opposes herself to her mother, a woman who, despite serial disappointments, continued to seek love with unsuitable men and sacrifice herself to the highs and lows of destructive relationships. Nora saw that her mother, an admirer of old romantic movies, sought to be a traditional romantic heroine and find a happily ever after. However, the men her mother chose were wrapped up in their own archetypes of stereotypical masculinity and insecure around her talent and her dreams to become an actress. This directly impacted Nora, who remembered seeing her mother “distraught” and avoiding “whole swaths of the city” in the aftermath of a bad breakup, so she decided that she herself would never fall in love (109). While Nora labels her mother “a romantic,” as opposed to a rationalist like herself, throughout the course of the novel she realizes that her mother’s all-consuming attitude to love was unhealthy and as outdated as the stereotype of the country heroine (109).
On her journey to Sunshine Falls, Nora continues to negotiate the stereotypes of romantic love, especially as her sister encourages her to beat her exes at their own game by falling in love with an attractive rural man. Nora realizes that despite being dilapidated and backward, Sunshine Falls is full of attractive people, both male and female, and jokes to herself that the stereotype favored by her exes is true. This especially comes to fruition when Nora meets Shepherd, who with his emerald eyes, “golden-blond hair, a square jaw, and a beard that manages to be rugged without looking unruly.” seems like a character from one of her mother’s old Harlequin romances (39). Shepherd appears to be the perfect character for Nora’s revenge on her exes, even down to his pastoral-sounding name and his scent of evergreens, which indicate his purely rural essence. However, casting Shepherd as the romantic hero and setting the happy ending in Sunshine Falls would fulfill the outdated romance convention of the urban person meeting a better, more authentic version of themselves through contact with a rural person. It would also be an overly neat plot device.
While Charlie, the true romantic hero of the novel, hails from Sunshine Falls, he is not only an urban misfit but also belongs to the industry that Nora is obsessed with. Charlie’s penchant for wearing black and his bookishness, alongside his generosity, highlight similar qualities in Nora. Rather than coming to the countryside and transforming, per the romance genre’s dictates, Nora learns that she is worthy of love just the way she is. This is important to challenging the genre, especially as men serially reject her for women who are positioned as her opposite. The romance genre, thus, is rooted in a stereotypical framework of suspecting that one needs to change in order to find love, but this novel rejects that premise.
Finally, given Nora’s propensity to sacrifice her own dreams in the outdated belief that she needs to care for her sister, it is important that a return to New York and a dream editing job are part of the happy ending. While in conventional romance novels the romantic relationship consumes a woman’s life and makes everything else seem unimportant, Henry’s update shows that a woman’s personal ambitions must also be fulfilled. Charlie’s recognition of this makes him a modern romantic hero, and the eventual return of both to New York reverses the trope that living in a rural community signals a more authentic way of living and being.
The Shadow of the Past on Nora’s Present
Two kinds of past memory shadow Nora’s present and keep her unable to move forward. The first type of memory is a positive one, associated with her mother in New York City. Although Nora acknowledges difficult times when her mother was breaking or broken-hearted, her childhood memories are mostly ones of resilience and fun. She recalls watching movies starring the plucky mid-20th-century actress Katharine Hepburn with her mother after one of her heartbreaks and their indulgences in “over-the-top vintage robes,” root beer, and chocolate pie, which provide an abundance not afforded by the broken relationships (48). While Nora never openly acknowledges missing a father, even joking that Freeman Books was reliably paternal, she unconsciously lapses into the role of co-parent and becomes the stable provider for Libby when her erratic mother is unable to hope. Interestingly, while Libby is the more whimsical sister, her memories of childhood are not as rose-colored as Nora’s, and she even goes so far as describing that time as “miserable” (223). Moreover, she tells Nora that while motherhood is hard, she cannot “imagine putting my worries on Tala and Bea like Mom did to us. Especially you” (289). Libby implies that their mother overstepped her boundaries and did not allow Nora the privilege of a carefree childhood. The difference between the sisters’ childhood memories influences their relationship to New York, the city they grew up in. Nora’s inability to leave New York aligns with her subconscious unwillingness to accept that her mother is gone. She is even unable to cry and, therefore, fully process her feelings without her mother being there telling her to “let it out” (251). Nora must grieve her mother’s death again when she gives herself permission to admit that situations such as choosing between love and career are difficult and sad. Part of her character development is learning that she does not need to find a solution for grief, but to accept it and experience it. However, her continued devotion to the city and the rituals concerning her mother indicate that it is an important part of her identity that she does not have to change. Charlie’s acknowledgement of this makes him the right partner for her.
While Nora cherishes some aspects of the past, she completely blocks off the memory of Jakob, stating that “what happened between him and me doesn’t belong at the end of a list; it belongs where I left it, in the smoking crater that changed my life forever” (95). The list Nora refers to is the one she relates to Charlie of the men who dumped her for rural women who were associated with cherry farms and country inns. Nora can joke about the exes she lists, for example stating that the girl Aaron left her for on Prince Edward Island was a redhead like that place’s fictional counterpart, Anne of Green Gables; however, when it comes to Jakob, her inability to joke or even speak on the topic indicates deep-seated trauma. The image of this pain as a “smoking crater” indicates a void, but one that is still active, with destructive potential (95). The parallel events of being with Jakob and leaving Libby alone when her mother died, and then being abandoned by Jakob in her hour of need, manifest in behaviors such as Nora’s inability to spend the night at any of her boyfriends’ homes. It is as though she is afraid of being unconscious in a strange place, where she will be less able to prevent disaster. Henry shows that as Nora navigates the new territory of Sunshine Falls and falling in love with Charlie, she nears the crater she has tried to avoid. Faced with the prospect of losing Charlie to Sunshine Falls, she opens up to him about her secret. Charlie, who identifies Jakob as “the villain” in the story because “he exited your relationship the second you needed something,” plays an important role in helping Nora face what happened and remember it differently (311). Released from the feeling that Jakob’s abandonment of her and the subsequent abandonments she endured were due to some innate deficiency, Nora can move forward and open her heart to love.
Solidarity of Women
Female friendships are an important staple in the romance novel, because the genre deals with women’s experiences, and these are informed by interactions with other women. This also occurs on a metafictional level, as female readers identify with the heroine and respond to her, comparing her choices to their own. Book Lovers features abundant female solidarity, beginning with Nora’s family of origin, which is headed exclusively by her mother when her father walks out during her mother’s second pregnancy. Rather than seeking a father figure among her mother’s unreliable boyfriends or even in her own relationships, Nora learns to rely on herself and does her best to look after women she believes are more vulnerable than her, namely Libby. Nora replays this dynamic of women relying upon each other in her work, as she is a champion of “most sensitive” female writer Dusty’s work and collaborates with female editors to make it a success during publication (174). When Dusty betrays Nora by basing Nadine on her worst traits, Nora is initially mortified but then puts her ego aside for the greater good of getting Dusty’s work published. Nora’s attitude in this instance demonstrates a generous, self-sacrificing nature that is the opposite of the self-focused Nadine stereotype. While Dusty’s motivation in creating the Nadine character remains unclear, in the end she does Nora a favor, as the stereotype spurs character development that proves she is not Nadine.
However, the most important female relationship in the novel is between Libby and Nora. The sisters are opposites, and Nora is conscious that in romance tropes, petite, sentimental Libby is “the Marianne to my Elinor, the Meg Ryan to my Parker Posey” (16). Here, citing Jane Austen’s 1811 classic Sense and Sensibility and Nora Ephron’s 1998 film You’ve Got Mail, Nora demonstrates her awareness that romance-themed books tend to feature female characters with opposing traits and, in the case of Ephron’s film, even pit women against each other. Nora recognizes that this would be easy enough with her and Libby, given that they not only have different looks and personalities but have also made different life choices. While Libby is a married mother of three, Nora is confident that she does not want children and has a pattern of attracting short-term relationships. However, rather than being competitive or defensive of their choices, Libby and Nora respect each other’s differences and are preternaturally close, feeling like there were “internal metronomes keeping us in sync” (16). Still, there is a level of secrecy that prevents them from having an honest dynamic; for example, Libby conceals that she is anemic because she knows her sister has a capacity to worry excessively, and Nora declined her dream job to help Libby. She even bought her an expensive wedding dress and pretended that it was from a sample sale. The sisters’ secret schemes, wherein Libby tries to convert citified Nora to Sunshine Falls and Nora tries to score Charlie’s apartment for Libby and her family, indicate how desperately they want to deny that they belong in different places. These secret plans lead to misunderstandings and mistrust that bring their relationship to a breaking point.
When the two finally accept that they must live in different places, the pain resembles that of a romantic breakup, especially as it is the catalyst for Nora’s being able to cry again. This is arguably because Libby’s residence in a different city casts a final death toll on her cherished family of origin. Nora learns to take a hint from Libby’s nickname for her, “Sissy,” and to act sisterly toward her sister, rather than as a surrogate parent (18). Although the renegotiation of the relationship and the acceptance that they will be farther apart is difficult, their closeness receives a boost from their ability to be honest with one another. The birth of Libby’s third daughter, Kitty, after the first two girls who are a mix of their mother’s and aunt’s traits, is symbolic of a new way of being in the world. The unpredictable impact of a new baby represents the optimistic uncertainty that surrounds the sisters’ relationship.
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