Romance booksStanley Tucci, Jenny Colgan, David Nicholls and others reflect on their favourite romantic comedies, including Heartburn, A Room With a View and The Spanish Love Deception
Curtis Sittenfeld
The Idea of You by Robinne Lee
I’m madly in love with this 2017 novel by Robinne Lee. It’s about Solène Marchand, a divorced 40-year-old art gallery owner and the mother of a 12-year-old daughter. Solène is gorgeous, sophisticated and unenthused about chaperoning her daughter and a few friends to see and meet a mega-famous boy band … but to her astonishment, Solène and the band’s extremely and delightfully Harry Styles-ish leader, Hayes, have outrageous chemistry and embark on a secret relationship. The tricky part is that Hayes is only 20. The glamorous settings are perfectly described, the celebrity details are magnificent (Lee herself is a Hollywood actor), the dialogue sparkles, and the sex scenes are scorching hot. And there are many of them. But the book also contains real emotional depth and nuance, in part because the challenges Solène and Hayes face aren’t contrived; they’re just as real as their attraction.
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld will be published by Doubleday in April.
Stanley Tucci
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
Heartburn, first published 40 years ago, is a book very ahead of its time. It speaks volumes about love and angst, with piercing insight softly camouflaged by dexterous wit, and is peppered with recipes. Very few people, other than Nora Ephron, would be capable of writing so brilliantly, or even daring to write almost joyfully, about the pains of a marriage collapsing because of a husband’s infidelity. She allows her protagonist, Rachel, to express her fears, doubts, weaknesses, neuroses, anger, cynicism and desires with such candour, intelligence and caustic humour that it makes us want to befriend her or just love her as she wishes to be loved.
The few times we ate together I realised that eating, for Nora, was never about stuffing oneself with a spate of appetisers and a huge entree, as it is for so many of us, myself included. It was about tasting a few bites of a few different dishes and savouring them. I couldn’t help but notice how she always took the time to really taste whatever it was she was eating. Every bite was carefully examined by her discerning palate because she knew that good food is deserving of our time, thought and attention.
It was this same focused, exacting attention that she gave to her writing. It is as lean as she was. Its rhythms are as sharp, crisp and clean as she was sartorially. Over the years, her novels, essays, screenplays and how she handled her very successful career have paved the way for so many women who have since followed in her footsteps. Heartburn has everything of Nora contained within its pages. It is smart, witty, sensitive, dark and hopeful. When you read it, you will understand why it is as beloved as its author was by so many.
A 40th anniversary edition of Heartburn by Norah Ephron, with a foreword by Stanley Tucci, is published by Virago on 9 March.
Monica Heisey
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
No book has affected me like the Confessions of Georgia Nicholson series affected my teenage self. Most YA books available at that time were about drug use and dystopia, very high drama but not particularly relatable, and certainly not funny. Louise Rennison’s series, which starts with Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, was a revelation. I was thrilled to find books about a group of girls behaving in ways I recognised: plotting insane beret-related missions at school, overthinking what to wear to weekend gigs and, crucially, making each other laugh. I remember cringing with recognition at Georgia’s assertion that although her friends were the funniest people she knew, they had to tone it down in front of boys, who “don’t like girls to be funny”. It was a relief to see Georgia learn that this isn’t always the case. Although she spends the first few books obsessed with a slightly serious older guy in a band (classic), she eventually finds a kindred spirit in the smart and silly Dave the Laugh, a love interest who for me is one of the great romantic heroes of literature, up there with Henry Tilney, Gilbert Blythe and Mark Darcy.
Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey is published by 4th Estate.
David Nicholls
A Room With a View by EM Forster
Like the best romantic comedies, A Room With a View is all about opposites; England and Italy, town and country, the conventional and the eccentric, rooms and views. In this it resembles not just Austen but the great Hollywood golden age romcoms, the merry war of The Philadelphia Story, The Awful Truth, Holiday and Bringing Up Baby. Class conflict is in there too, and male and female and our expectations of both. For Cousin Charlotte, separation is the answer. God forbid a young lady should sleep in a bed that’s been recently occupied by a man, especially a man of humble origins. “Why were most big things unladylike?” Lucy wonders. Why can’t she live like she plays the piano?
But like the best romcoms, it’s not just about the lovers, and the supporting cast are wonderful, too: pretentious Cecil Vyse, whom Lucy can only think of in a room; the “almost too original” Miss Lavish; and eternally martyred poor Charlotte, whose priggish exterior conceals romantic fantasies. The outcome of the novel is never in doubt, but Forster knows it: “It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, ‘She loves young Emerson.’ A reader in Lucy’s place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle but bewildering to practise.” It’s this bewilderment that makes the novel such a pleasure.
Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls is published by Hodder.
Ore Agbaje-Williams
The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas
Currently my favourite romcom is The Spanish Love Deception. Who doesn’t love an enemies-to-lovers, I-need-a-date-to-prove-I’m-OK-with-my-ex-being-at-my-sister’s-wedding trope? No one! Armas creates a wholly addictive will-they-won’t-they story with Lina and Aaron. As with most romcoms, you know what’s going to happen, you just don’t know how it’s going to happen, or when. And Armas’s ability to keep you guessing, to make you ridiculously impatient and to show the growth of her characters is what has made me recommend this book to everyone.
The Three of Us by Ore Agbaje-Williams will be published by Jonathan Cape in May.
Jenny Colgan
The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson
“I write,” Eva Ibbotson once said, “for very clever women who have the flu.” The Morning Gift is a perfect marriage of deep romance and gently observed social comedy, set against a war-torn Europe that Jewish-Austrian refugee Ibbotson knew rather a lot about.
Ruth Berger, “face of a milkmaid, eyes of Nefertiti … scarcely twenty years old, and a child of the new Europe Hitler had made” is smuggled out of Vienna (where she is hiding in the Museum of Natural History), by way of a morganatic marriage to Quin Somerville, the much older professor who takes a huge risk. From then on, of course, things only get more complicated …
It is the perfect mix of thrilling, romantic, very funny – poor old Verena, the thwarted rival for Quin’s affections – as well of course as being frightfully sexy, even though there is practically no sex in it. Whenever I teach or give talks it is at the very top of my recommendation list: I think it is flawless. I cannot imagine this book not making your heart swoon and your day brighter – our only job.
The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan is published by Sphere.
Mike Gayle
The Wheels of Chance by HG Wells
Although it was published in 1896, The Wheels of Chance by HG Wells has all the romcom tropes one could hope for. An underdog romantic lead in draper’s assistant Mr Hoopdriver, an unattainable manic pixie dream girl in upper-class Jessie Milton, and a bicycle-crash meet-cute. I was 17 the first time I read it, in the grip of an unrequited love and, despite there being 100 years between us, I found myself identifying closely with poor old Hoopdriver. Spoiler alert: because of the British class system he doesn’t end up with Jessie. And while some might find that sad, I found it strangely comforting. You could still be a hero and not get the girl, the book seemed to be saying. Life isn’t just about happy endings, it can be about learning and growing, too. As a sop of sorts, at the book’s close Jessie holds out the vague hope that “in six years’ time” things might be different. I like to imagine that rather than waiting patiently for an end to social hierarchies Hoopdriver entered the new century not only knowing his true worth, but hand in hand with someone who appreciated him for who he already was.
The Museum of Ordinary People by Mike Gayle is published by Hodder.
Laura Kay
In at the Deep End by Kate Davies
I always suggest In at the Deep End when people ask for a queer romcom recommendation or want to read something truly, outrageously sexy, which I think we can all agree is half the fun of reading romance.
Julia, newly out and ready to learn all about being a lesbian, finds herself diving head first (so to speak) into the queer kink scene – falling in love, making new friendships and, of course, having her heart broken.
It’s so rare to find a book that makes you laugh out loud, blush when reading in public and then, totally surprisingly, burst into tears. I’ve returned to it when I’m looking for a comfort read, and when I want to live vicariously through someone experiencing queerness and sex and lust for the first time. When I’m writing, I remember how connected I felt to Julia and her journey, and try to inject some of that magic into my own work.
Wild Things by Laura Kay will be published by Quercus in May.
Naoise Dolan
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
It is wise to make an acquaintance with Jane Austen at the tenderest age you can, the better to revisit her evermore. Austen’s 1813 novel was my point of admission, my inaugural Exile on Jane St. I first read it at age 13. When paying Austen this introductory call, I stepped into her prose, locked the door, and closed the curtains. The topic seemed obviously to be romance, the tone was obviously comedic, I therefore read it as a romcom; and I had a great time. When I reread it a few years later as an undergraduate, I set out to dissect its ideology (/ies, for I was profound and saw multiplicity in all things), and I had a great time. A few years later in my mid-20s, when I was teaching myself how to write novels, I approached Pride and Prejudice by unpacking its machinery, its scaffolding, how she did it, and I had a great time. I’ve never had a bad time with Austen, is what I’m saying. Romance, comedy, some permutation of the two, and everything else under the sun: she’s got it all.
The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan will be published by W&N in May.
Katherine Heiny
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
High Fidelity may not fit the formal definition of a romantic comedy: true love overcoming any obstacle. The only obstacle true love has to conquer in Nick Hornby’s comic novel is the main character’s fear of commitment. But it’s classic nonetheless and will forever be one of my favourites.
The novel opens with the protagonist listing his top five breakups, only to tell us that the most recent breakup isn’t even on the list. “If you wanted to really mess me up,” he informs his most recent girlfriend, “you should have got to me earlier.” Then he settles down to the business of getting over her by rearranging his record collection. No finer opening chapter exists.
High Fidelity will have you thinking in Top 5 lists for a long time, possibly for ever, and it will revolutionise the way you organise your music collection. It will make you examine your life more closely and challenge your beliefs about friendship, marriage, career, monogamy and favourite movies. It will change you. And that’s the definition of a great book.
Games and Rituals, the new short story collection by Katherine Heiny, will be published by 4th Estate in April.
Rebecca Wait
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
I got into Barbara Pym as a teenager after finding a selection of her novels on my grandmother’s shelf. Because the books were so old and battered, I thought for a while that I was one of Pym’s only surviving readers. (I also believed, around the same time, that I’d single-handedly discovered Gerard Manley Hopkins.) But I needn’t have worried. Pym’s wry humour brings her new fans with every generation.
Excellent Women, published in 1952, starts out looking a lot like a traditional romcom as the heroine – put-upon, self-deprecating Mildred Lathbury – develops a crush on her dashing new neighbour. But the book resolutely refuses to complete the romcom arc. Although Mildred does end up with someone by the end of the novel, it is not exactly satisfactory. Pym isn’t interested in wish fulfilment. What she gives us instead is a brilliant, funny, poignant novel about the expectations placed on women in postwar England, and the minute absurdities of everyday life. As Mildred reflects, “After all, life was like that for most of us – the small unpleasantnesses rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction.”
I’m Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait is published by Riverrun.
Meg Rosoff
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Is anything more fitting for mid-February’s grim celebration of love than Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate? With its hilariously tragic collection of bored aristocrats and their ill-matched, ill-fated affairs, it’s as much a warning as a paean to romance. First published in 1949 as a sequel to The Pursuit of Love (if you’re a fast reader, you can get through both in the time it takes to have a one-night stand), Love in a Cold Climate recounts Polly Hampton’s misguided passion for the world’s most inappropriate man, as told by her friend, Fanny, who is somewhat less disastrously in love with an Oxford don. Both love affairs lead to marriage, with mixed (but not unexpected) results.
The novel transcends what you might call social relevance. Mitford’s satirical take on U and non-U society is as exotic now as it was in my permanently lovelorn 20s in 1980s New York City. But the spectacle of young women looking for love in all the wrong places never really grows old.
Friends Like These by Meg Rosoff is published by Bloomsbury.
Beth O’Leary
The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella
The Undomestic Goddess is pure 00s romcom gold. Sophie Kinsella’s heroine, Samantha, makes a career-ending mistake at work, walks right out of the office, and flees London. Through a brilliantly executed comedy of errors, she ends up in a housekeeping job at a beautiful manor house in the countryside.
Romantic comedies tend to lean more towards either “rom” or “com”, and this is partly because it’s challenging to blend sexiness with slapstick. Kinsella does it with aplomb here. This novel taps into something deeply tempting (who hasn’t wanted to walk out of their office job and pretend to be someone else for a while?) and this makes it perfect escapism. But it also has a warm lesson at its heart about slowing down, learning new things and asking ourselves what really matters in life. Plus … there’s sexy fruit-picking. Truly, it’s a classic of the genre.
The No-Show by Beth O’Leary is published by Quercus.
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