“My Lover’s Lover” by Maggie O’Farrell

I am becoming convinced that there are two different Maggie O’Farrells: one who has written amazing books like After You’d Gone, Hamnet, and The Marriage Portrait, and one who is readable but doesn’t quite measure up (The Hand That First Held Mine, and now this one). 

Am I being too harsh? There were parts of My Lover’s Lover that really shone. Like, true O’Farrell-level writing. And even in the parts that didn’t have the same gleam, I found myself really getting into the story. But there was a surprising amount of this book that struck me like the product of a creative writing course. Showing off? Trying too hard? Whatever it was, those parts didn’t ring true for me. 

The story starts with pretty but impulsive Lily, who has a meet-cute with handsome but impulsive Marcus, and suddenly they’re flatmates (along with the also-handsome but less impulsive Aiden). Lily quickly realizes she has replaced Sinead, who was until very recently Marcus’s girlfriend, but Lily is not quite sure of Sinead’s fate. All she’s gotten from Marcus is “Sinead is no longer with us.” 

So far this sounds like a relatively silly romantic comedy, right? Which you know is not exactly my thing. But you also know that not finishing a book is also not my thing. And I have O’Farrell Faith. So I kept going. 

And then it kind of became a ghost story, and I followed all sorts of red herrings. What had happened to Sinead? Did Marcus kill her?? Or maybe she wasn’t actually dead? I even took a crazy leap: Aiden is an anagram for Sinead (if you take away the S). Maybe Aiden was a trans man who used to be Sinead! (Spoiler alert: I was way off track.)

All of these parts of the book were disappointing but readable. It’s only when we get to go back in time and learn about the relationship between Sinead and Marcus that it stopped seeming like a creative writing effort and started seeming like a book by Maggie O’Farrell (the real one). Maybe this was just what Sam would call a “difficult second novel”? Anyway, it’s not going to stop me from reading her books. Six down, three to go.