Wednesday, July 17, 2013

About Last Night by Ruthie Knox

About Last Night by Ruthie Knox
Published June 11, 2012

“Listen, City,” she said. “About last night. Thanks for—”
For getting me back on the train? For taking me home with you, undressing me, letting me sleep in your bed, washing my clothes, setting out a towel and a toothbrush for me, and making me breakfast? Oh, and let’s not forget kissing me and touching me until I damn near lost my mind.
“— for taking care of me,” she finished.

Grade: A-

Official Summary from Author’s Site:
Cath Talarico knows a mistake when she makes it, and God knows she’s made her share. So many, in fact, that this Chicago girl knows London is her last, best shot at starting over. But bad habits are hard to break, and soon Cath finds herself back where she has vowed never to go . . . in the bed of a man who is all kinds of wrong: too rich, too classy, too uptight for a free-spirited troublemaker like her.

Nev Chamberlain feels trapped and miserable in his family’s banking empire. But beneath his pinstripes is an artist and bohemian struggling to break free and lose control. Mary Catherine — even her name turns him on — with her tattoos, her secrets, and her gamine, sex-starved body, unleashes all kinds of fantasies.

When blue blood mixes with bad blood, can a couple that is definitely wrong for each other ever be perfectly right? And with a little luck and a lot of love, can they make last night last a lifetime?

I Say:
About Last Night is not light and fluffy; it’s intense and dark, with a very damaged heroine and the world’s hottest banker. I haven’t been reading many contemporaries lately, but Courtney Milan’s review convinced me to give this book—and this author—a try. I’m glad I did.

In a way, I feel like I can’t read this book the way it’s meant to be read, and it’s because of the heroine. Cath is absolutely my polar opposite. If I was in a romance, I’d be in a nineteenth-century historical, a scholarly, socially inept, sheltered spinster. Cath has more experience with men, life, and really awful stuff than I could get in three lifetimes. The only thing I have context for is her current project on a knitting exhibit, and even then I don’t even knit, I crochet. What she does hardly makes sense to me.

And yet, by the skill of the author, I begin to understand. I can at least sympathize with Cath and feel for her. Ruthie Knox is exposing me to reactions—being in a relationship and refusing to acknowledge it as one, remaining skittish and untrusting even when someone treats you well, keeping almost all personal information to yourself—that are utterly foreign, which stem from a past I can barely imagine. None of these things are in my nature, and I hope to never see or experience the kind of trauma that made Cath who she is.

The opening scene is delightful—Cath knows her fellow passengers so well that she successfully predicts their order of appearance at the train station, thus winning a bet and gaining an item for her knitting exhibit. The next scene is equally delightful, for a much different reason. Cath ends up at someone’s house, one of the train passengers she has nicknamed City. “Cool as a cucumber and veddy, veddy English.” (The book is set in contemporary Britain, but Cath grew up in America.) City, whose real name is Nev, treats her very well when she accidentally gets extremely drunk—there’s a bonus reminder in this book that allergy medicine does not mix well with alcohol. But when Cath wakes up and finds someone she thought was a stuffy banker dressed in casual clothes and displaying a talent for painting…their chemistry just…I swear, some of these pages crackle. It’s a very adult book, we’ll just say that.

Then things get more complicated when Nev’s brother shows up and Cath slinks out the door without even leaving a phone number. A good portion of the book is devoted to Nev patiently wooing Cath and her allowing him ever so slightly closer. It’s much less frustrating than it sounds, because it’s done well. And it’s not completely angsty—Nev and Cath have cute moments, like when Nev woos her with junk food. Or when they have sexy banter:

“If I didn’t know better, I’d begin to think you don’t like me.”
“Who says I like you?” But the question didn’t come out as ballsy as she wanted it to, not when he was close enough to make her skin itch.
He chuckled. “How many times did you come last night?” he asked in a low voice.
Three. “I’m not answering that question.”
“You don’t have to. I remember every one. You like me fine.”

Have I mentioned that Nev is really awesome? He’s pretty much ideal. He has his issues, for sure—mostly with his family and his career. But he cooks, he runs, he’s thoughtful in his treatment of Cath, he’s patient in his courtship of her, he’s creative and playful in bed, and he gives this speech:

“[I]t seems to me that when I meet a woman with whom I have a phenomenal physical connection, who I think about so much it disrupts my ability to do my job, not to mention sleep, and who I find attractive and interesting and funny and enjoy spending time with, perhaps it’s not a bad idea to get to know her better. Which is why I find it a bit baffling, to be honest, that you’re so determined to keep me at arm’s length.”

Cath is determined to deny things. In fact, she believes that she can’t trust any of her instincts because they led her astray in the past. Hence, the more she likes Nev, the more nervous she becomes. But their emotional relationship progresses, ever so slowly, and they fall in love. And they’re so wonderful together. And there are heartbreaking lines like “Their love was a mistake, but it was real,” and “Knowing that what they had was a mistake didn’t make it any less real or any less beautiful.” And then there is a messy fight. In public. And it’s spectacularly awful.

Here I’ll back up and mention that Cath’s job is awesome, as is her relationship with her boss, Judith. They’re curators working on an exhibit about hand-knitting. One of my favorite exchanges:

Cath sighed. “I thought curators would be above the pressure to sex everything up.”
“Nope. If you want to be one, you’ll have to get creative.”
“Creative is my middle name.”
“Your middle name is Catherine,” Judith said, packing the sweaters back into the box.

This is relevant because Cath finds a way to make hand-knitting very sexy, indeed. I’m a little uncomfortable with her solution (mild spoiler): appearing on television and in newspapers wearing a hand-knit bikini. Public display of her tattoos, which are on her stomach and back, appeared in the aforementioned messy fight and comes back again for the ending.

The ending also makes me a little uncomfortable; though I can justify it, I wish I didn’t need to justify it. (SPOILER) Nev puts on an art show, with paintings of Cath’s tattoos and an erotic painting of Cath and Nev prominently displayed. He wants to show her his perspective of her life and convince her she does love him. It’s very sweet and very effective but…displayed in public. With strangers and Nev’s parents and Cath’s boss and Cath’s boss’s boss. Also, this dialogue:

“You could sue me for all of them. I didn’t ask you to sign a release.”
“I would’ve said no.”
“Precisely.”

In the context of Cath’s contrariness and reluctance and self-denial, it makes sense. But I’m uncomfortable. Someone else expresses similar sentiments, but more strongly.

Bottom Line:

This review isn’t nearly as long as it should be. I have trouble talking about this book because I can consume it, but I can’t fully process it. I really am a sheltered spinster, despite living in the twenty-first century, and that means it’s hard for me to process such a complex, adult relationship. But it’s an excellently-written book, with achingly real characters and a fascinating, original, thought-provoking take on tropes of “opposites attract” and “physical before emotional.”

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