Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it is awkward.
Sometimes they are too hurt to talk to each other. Other partners come and go, sometimes people that Jennifer believes she could be happy with forever – but Nick is always there at the back of her mind. Sometimes we don’t see Jennifer for a handful of years at a time, and pick up with her at the next significant Nick encounter. Over those 20 years, their paths cross time and again – the friendship is picked up, and sometimes it wanes and sometimes it is violently discarded. Nick and Jennifer lose touch after an early misunderstanding, but (unsurprisingly) he is not then absent from the novel. I was following Jennifer’s path a few years later, but not a great deal had changed. And this isn’t one of those novels where the heroine achieves everything she puts her mind to – as someone who also tried to get work in editorial publishing, I recognised and winced at how many obstacles are in the way, and how publishing seems set up for people who can afford to do unpaid internships. I relished every time Manning got in a literary reference, and you could tell that she the list of books Jennifer recommends for a teenage girl to read is a list close to Manning’s heart. Her love may revolve around him, but her life does not.Īs the years go by, we see Jennifer trying desperately to get into publishing, and find a role that fits the love of books that never leaves her. One of the most impressive things about London, With Love is that Manning creates a heroine who is completely fixated on a boy but is still independent, determined and ambitious. Not that Jennifer is entirely boy-focused. He seems simply a dream that can’t come true. But while she never recovers from that crush that snowballs into love, she never wants to chance telling him about it. Somehow, despite the abyss she perceives between them, they do end up becoming friends – and then best friends. They meet as teenagers in the early 1980s, where Jennifer is an intelligent, bookish, uncool girl desperately seeking somewhere to belong – and Nick is (in her eyes) a cool, handsome, unknowable boy far out of her league. London, With Love tells the story of Jennifer (/Jen/Jenny, depending on her stage in life) and Nick over the course of two decades. I went in a little nervously, for reasons I will explain shortly, but I finished it a complete Manning convert.
There are lots to choose from, and I chose London, With Love (2022) more or less at random from the ones available on Audible. I’ve been e-friends with Sarra Manning for years, and have read some wonderful books on her recommendation – but somehow I have never got around to reading one of her own books.
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