I loved Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld’s modern interpretation of Pride and Prejudice, written for The Austen Project and published in 2016. It was smart, funny and romantic, and a very clever update. So I was expecting a similar vibe with Romantic Comedy, a novel about a sketch writer for a late night TV show and an unexpected romance.
Sally Milz has been writing comedy sketches for The Night Owls for almost ten years and has seen a lot of talent come and go. When fellow writer Danny starts dating Annabel, a beautiful actress who is also super talented and bright, Sally is peeved. Why is it that fairly ordinary guys like Danny can date and even plan a future with women who are way out of their league, when it never happens the other way around? There have been several Danny/Annabel type matches at the studio alone but you never see an ordinary-looking woman, or even a mildly pretty one, catching the eye of handsome star in his prime.
The arrival of Noah Brewster, a hugely successful and drop-dead gorgeous music star, as a guest host on the show gives Sally the perfect opportunity for a sketch to highlight this anomaly. The Danny Horst Rule would star Noah as the gorgeous guy who tries to date an average girl. Sally gets more of her skits voted in for the show that week, and so gets to spend more time with Noah at rehearsals. She finds him surprisingly nice, and what’s more, he apparently likes her. He’s easy to talk to and seems to seek her out.
The story follows their interactions and Sally’s growing attraction to Noah, a relationship that she discounts, because there’s no way a guy like that would ever think of her romantically, is there? We meet other people on The Night Owls, particularly fellow actors like Viv and Henrietta, who are Sally’s friends and sounding boards, whose advice is sometimes helpful, and often hilarious. Viv herself has met an eye doctor she’s attracted to so there’s advice going both ways. And we get a bit of Sally’s backstory – a failed marriage, the colleague who broke her heart.
Working on The Night Owls, Sally works excruciatingly long days, and nights, taking naps in her office, but then she’s a perfectionist and gives her work her all. She has decided never again to date a colleague, and has no time for more than an occasional night spent with someone she doesn’t care about. When Noah upsets the applecart of her carefully managed feelings, she doesn’t know what to do.
I heard someone say my name, but at first I was so deeply asleep that I incorporated the voice into my dream. I thought it was Bernard, the janitor, coming to empty my trash can, and, seamlessly, I mumbled, “You can leave the molluscs.” I felt a hand lightly pat my shoulder, and the person said, “Sally, I’m really sorry to bother you” – not a commonly uttered phrase at TNO – and I pulled the T-shrit off my eyes and the earplugs from my ears, sat straight up, and said, “What do you want?”
Hunched over the couch at such an angle that my sitting up had brought our faces within a few inches of each other was Noah Brewster.
This was a fun read for the most part. I found the look behind the scenes of a television show fascinating and Sittenfeld peoples it with plenty of interesting characters and scenarios. Danny’s and Annabel’s relationship has its ups and downs and so there’s plenty going on. There are ups and downs for Sally and Noah too, and a lot of the story has the reader wondering: will they or won’t they? There’s Covid and the lock-downs, long-distance communication and a lot of soul searching. So while this is in many ways a romantic comedy, it’s also at times a serious look at love and life.
Curtis Sittenfeld has written a smart, thoughtful and very romantic novel which has moments of laugh-out-loud humour. My only quibble is that Sally can be difficult company at times, with a tendency to shoot herself in the foot to make a point. Sometimes I wanted to give her a good telling off. So while I didn’t enjoy Romantic Comedy quite as much as Eligible, it’s still entertaining and clever – and a three-and-a-half-star read from me.
Judith McKinnon 