Table for One by Emma Gannon
Written by Ashley Kelmore, Posted in Reviews
Rating:
4 Stars
In a nutshell:
Willow is living with her partner of over a decade. They’ve founded a company together, but things may not be going as well as Willow thinks.
Best for:
Anyone looking for a different version of Eat Pray Love.
Quote that made me think:
“Be careful about what you label yourself, because a lot of the labels we put on ourselves might not be true.”
Why I chose it:
Book club pick.
Review:
I’ve read a book by this author before. I checked out my review, and I wasn’t a huge fan of it. So I was a bit skeptical but the premise was interesting.
I read this book in one day. I inhaled it. I wanted to see what was going to happen next.
The author uses a convention I haven’t really seen before – chapters alternate between now and a bit back in time, but each ‘back in time’ chapter is actually getting us farther away from now, revealing more and more about the young adult life and childhood of our narrator Willow. It’s a clever tactic, and it works well in this book, because the pieces all start to fit together as the story is told in both directions.
Willow has a close circle of friends – Pen, who is single at the start, Alice, who is married and trying for a child, and Lola, who is in a steady, committed relationship. She also her aunt Carla, who basically raised her. Willow has been in such a relationship herself for over a decade, and now in her mid-30s, is hoping to take the next steps with Dom. They have a house, but she wants a child, and to be married.
Things don’t go that way. And because of the company they founded together, Willow finds herself single and jobless at the same time. But she was once a journalist, and ends up on an assignment to profile a Gen Z influencer whose whole brand is women should be single and live lives for themselves.
I enjoy the author’s exploration of the different relationships Willow has, — the challenges, the hypocrisies, to joy, the history. How sometimes people know us so well, but even then, they don’t know everything. How convention might be what someone wants, but perhaps they only want it because they didn’t seriously consider any other option?
The characters aren’t all fully fleshed out, Willow, Pen, and Carla especially feel like people I could know, and their interactions feel real. The book feels real.
The only drawback — and this is the case with so many books — is that a lot of what is preached in the pages about living an intentional life, making choices that make you happen, etc., are super easy to suggest when one has access to money.
Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Yes
