Simone: A Novel

I'm not sure what I've just read. If I had to oneliner it I might go with “midlife-crisis wish-fulfillment fantasy”, but that's awfully demeaning for a novel I quite enjoyed. Since I'm not constrained by sound-bite limitations, but I am constrained by a wish not to spoil plot elements, I'll find a balance.

We begin with a somewhat pretentious middle-aged male writer who starts receiving stalky notes: written in chalk on the sidewalk, placed on his windshield, soon even left on his answering machine by a robotic voice. The notes are literary quotations over which he swoons; he then proceeds to fall in love, sight unseen, with the sender. (That would totally work if the genders were reversed, wouldn't it?) They manage to meet, spend time together, and of course end up in bed together despite him not being her usual type except he's so darn irresistible; then have a breakup fight because—this is not a huge spoiler—neither of them is actually very good at communicating f2f; reune despite great odds thanks to convenient authorial license; and you'll need to read the book to find out the rest.

You know what surprises me? That I do recommend reading it despite my glib dismissive comments. The plot doesn't work, and many of the Mary Sue moments don't either, but dammit the novel does. Lalo writes beautifully, with rich attention to setting details and, more importantly, tantalizing hints of the profound inner lives of the characters. Just glimpses, mind you, but I found them effective. There are deep struggles here: cross-cultural acceptance, women's rights, immigration, colonialism, societal pains as well as personal ones. Lalo shows us struggles that feel heartbreakingly real but he never focuses too closely on them; and in this way I think his writing is more effective than if he came off preachy. This book will leave you thoughtful.

So... I dunno. I'll stand by my initial oneliner, with the caveat that, as midlife-crisis wish-fulfillment fantasies go, it's possibly the best I've read. And it has a lot more going for it. Do give it a chance. (And do feel free to skip the incongruous diatribe on literature, publishing, and Hispanic inferiority complexes near the end.)