Emily Franklin's The Girls' Almanac covers relationships, fertility problems, betrayals, illness, death and, ultimately, friendships: how they are formed and why they last. Following the intertwining lives of Jenna and Lucy, two women who eventually become best friends, we are taken on a tour of how people’s lives cross and what brings them together. The book is written in an unusual format. It’s not linear, instead we get a snippet here and a snippet there told in a series of short stories. First up is Lucy as she comes to terms with the death of her fiance and her mother’s second marriage. The second story is also about Lucy but this time she is a young girl with a friend called Alex. Next comes Gabrielle and Andrea, both as young girls, then Gabrielle pops up two stories later as a doctor in Bogota.
There are so many stories and time frames the characters are hard to keep up with (there’s a chart at the beginning of the book just in case the reader loses track). No sooner have we met and been given the background of a character than that story ends and we hear no more about them, which gave me the impression that the book was imparting facts rather than telling a story. Some stories were interesting but there were some I just didn’t see the point of. Unfortunately the second was one of them, which didn’t bode well for the rest of the book.
It has been said that some short stories are a slice of life but the detached way in which these stories were told left me unemotional about the characters and not really concerned about how or why their lives intertwined. [Nicola Pedley]
Rating: 2 out of 5
Like this? Try The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank.
