Fiction #12 in 2009 – The Myth of You and Me: A Novel by Leah Stewart

The Myth of You and Me: A Novel by Leah Stewart

From Publishers Weekly (amazon.com):

Stewart peers into the complicated heart of friendship in a moving second novel (after 2000’s Body of a Girl). Ever since a cataclysmic falling out with her best friend, Sonia, after college, Cameron’s closest companion has been Oliver, the 92-year-old historian she lives with and cares for in Oxford, Miss. Oliver’s death leaves Cameron alone and adrift, until she discovers that he has given her one last task: she must track down her estranged best friend (whose letter announcing her engagement Cameron had so recently ignored) and deliver a mysterious present to her. Cameron’s journey leads her back to the people, places and memories of their shared past, when they called themselves “Cameronia” and swore to be friends forever. It was a relationship more powerful than romantic love—yet romantic love (or sex, anyway) could still wreck it. Stewart lures the reader forward with two unanswered questions: What was the disaster that ended their friendship, and what will be revealed when Cameron and Sonia are together again and Oliver’s package is finally opened? The book is heartfelt and its characters believable jigsaw puzzles of insecurities, talents and secrets, and if Cameron’s carefully guarded anger makes her occasionally disagreeable, readers will nevertheless welcome her happy ending.

My thoughts:

• Not the type of book I usually read, but hey, I was missing my girl friends back home, so thought it’d be nice to read a book about girl friendship.

• The book is about how 2 best friends got into a fight (but of course the author didn’t tell you why in the begining) and ended up not talking for 8 years. I guessed the reason half way through, if not sooner. I kept hoping I was wrong, that it couldn’t be that predictable. Really?! Maybe I read too many crimes novels with more sophisticated twists.

• If there is one thing I like about the book, it is this quote regarding why some books stopped where it stopped, from a writer’s perspective (p137). I found it interesting since I don’t always want a happy ending book: “A happy ending isn’t really the end, it’s just the place where you choose to stop telling the story. Why not make everything work out when you have the chance?”