Carole Matthew’s You Drive Me Crazy is romantic comedy with a bit of a difference.
“I live in Milton Keynes, the fastest-growing city in the UK. It’s a vibrant place that resembles a large slab of America set down amidst the green and gentle countryside of Buckinghamshire. I’m a bit of an anomaly here in that I arrived before it was a new city, when it was just a twinkle in a planner’s eye and there was no grid system, no shopping mall and no housing estates, only fields and mud and cows.” (8)
Carole Matthews’ “You Drive Me Crazy”
Since Anna first moved to the brand new Buckinghamshire city, she has watched her neighbourhood, her home and her life crumble around her. Now, her no-good husband Bruno has disappeared once again, leaving Anna struggling to find work and put her life back together, and relying on benefits to feed her two young children. Anna’s one lifeline is her best friend, Sophie, who is locked in an unhappy marriage of her own and duty-bound to stay because of her children. But amidst all this suffering, there remain the best-loved ingredients of any example of chick-lit: ditsy misunderstandings, slapstick accidents, awkward encounters, pleasant and chivalrous surprises and, for the most part, happy endings.
These are the same “broad-minded, sex-starved” (201) girls that you might find in glamorous Sex and the City apartments, only this is the real world. Here amidst the bright lights of Milton Keynes, women sometimes have to settle for less than their wildest dreams.
This is definitely chick-lit, and yet I’m forced to admit that Matthews deals will a whole lot more. In fact, at times it strays into being a state-of-England novel.
There is certainly very little of Sex and the City’s glamour in Matthews’ novel…
Matthews comments ironically on institutional prejudice:
“as we all know from the daily press, we single-parent families are the scourge of the nation, along with asylum seekers, beggars, drug addicts and the drivers of Vauxhall Corsas” (11).
Matthews comments on the lack of respect for marriage:
“Marriage seemed to be an institution that no one respected any more – particularly not in Britain. This morning, the solicitor had [said] gaily […] that the UK enjoyed the highest divorce rate in Europe and that the figures had now ominously slipped to the ratio of one in two marriages ending in failure.” (34)
Matthews even comments on the obsessive work ethic in the UK that sacrifices all the pleasure of life:
“The British worked, on average, the longest hours in Europe, if you could believe what you read in the newspapers” (71).
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
Stifled and stranded in Milton Keynes, with an array of issues that she has to face on a daily basis, Anna fears for and obsesses over her children’s futures. (“Isn’t there some survey that says that by the year 2023 everyone in the world will [grow up to] be Elvis impersonators?” (44)). It isn’t until she meets someone new, and gets out of the ghastly man-made city, back into the surrounding “sleepy market town[s]” (39) and seaside retreats, that she learns to relax and enjoy life once again.
I thought I was going to abhor this book (I’ve read too much of this genre recently), but I didn’t. I found it well-written and humorous, with characters and events that were relatable, and I particularly enjoyed its commentary on modern Britain, set in the heartland – or perhaps I should say the central switchboard – of sterile Milton Keynes. There were one or two too many twists at the end, dragging it out slightly, but overall I rate this novel 3/5 stars.
Next time I’ll be reviewing Xiaolu Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. I can tell you now, it’s a life-changer.
MATTHEWS, Carole. You Drive Me Crazy. London: Sphere, 2013.
Featured Image: Grid system in Milton Keynes.
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Placing Myself 