Love And Other Puzzles caught my eye because the blurb promised a zany “Nora Ephron-esque” romantic comedy, set in my home city of Sydney. I’m powerless to resist a fun read set in a familiar locale.
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The story follows a young(ish) woman, Rory, who has recently become restless and dissatisfied with her orderly and predictable life. She left Brisbane five years prior to move to the big smoke and become a “serious journalist” – but her laminated list of five-year goals is languishing untouched in a drawer. She does work at a newspaper, but all she does is vet the classifieds for porn before they go to print and assemble the weekly TV guide puzzle. She does everything “right” – she follows her meal plan, she gets 12,000 steps a day, and she occasionally calls her mother – but her life feels empty.
So, she decides on a whim to let the clues from the New York Times crossword puzzle app make her decisions every day for a week. “There’s nothing wrong with structured whimsy,” she tells herself. And yet, almost immediately, she finds herself telling a big fib at her job (one that could get her fired), getting stuck climbing out of a restaurant window, meeting an attractive stranger who isn’t her long(ish) term boyfriend, and assailing a breakfast TV show host in a carpark at 3:30AM.
Love And Other Puzzles is a deeply millennial novel – unfortunately in more of the “cringe” sense than the Sally Rooney literary one. It’s also very cutesy. In case you were in any doubt, there are frequent allusions to classic rom-com movies like Notting Hill and When Harry Met Sally (and a complete list of the references to be found in the back of the book, just to make sure you didn’t miss any). The chapters are long – loooooong – so you’re unlikely to find yourself “just-one-more-chapter”ing past your bedtime.
The setting also wasn’t quite as Sydney-centric as I’d hoped. Perhaps it’s only something that a true Sydneysider would pick up on, but really this story could’ve taken place just about anywhere. The “Golden Screen” cinema where a few crucial scenes take place is clearly based on Newtown’s Dendy Cinema, and I couldn’t understand why Allsopp felt the need to fictionalise its name. The 334 bus route that Rory takes religiously to work doesn’t actually exist, and I couldn’t piece together the geography of its journey in my mind.
And, speaking of the bus route, the most egregious crime in Love And Other Puzzles in my opinion is the bus driver sub-plot. Rory has a “regular” bus driver who takes her to work every morning. She’s decided that he is a benevolent and charming man in whom she can place absolute trust, based on… not much, really. He smiles at her, and has a tissue to offer if she needs one. Apparently, that’s a sturdy enough foundation of trust for Rory to accept an offer of a lift from him – in his personal vehicle – when the crossword clues “tell” her to deliberately miss her stop. As if that weren’t unbelievable enough (no sane Sydney woman would ever), the driver then reveals as they carpool that he’s actually a wealthy banker who lives in Mosman and he just drives that one route each day for fun.
So, I’m sorry to say I didn’t love Love And Other Puzzles as much as I’d hoped to. There were a few good moments (especially in the dialogue), but no real snort-laughs, and it all felt just a little forced. I’d love Allsopp to write a novel based in the real geography of Sydney, with a protagonist who was a bit less credulous and a lot more jaded.
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