Far From Brooklyn

I think I read this, in part, because like “A Lie That You Told Yourself” I saw possible parallels to my recently completed novel, “The One Who Stayed.”

I’m not sure what led me to think that, but I did. Anyway, “The Fallback Plan” is a readable, half-comedic look at a young woman struggling to carve out a place for herself after graduating from college.

It was published in 2012, so the great recession was still very fresh in everyone’s mind, and the challenges of finding a job and “getting started” were still pretty serious. This book seesaws, though: At the outset, it plays things for laughs, offering up borscht-belt patter as the narrator squabbles with her parents about money and finding a job. It then veers serious as the girl makes some bad decisions–and is badly mistreated by her new employers and by a friend of a friend that she has a crush on.

The latter part of the book is the better. It reminded me of Sally Rooney’s “Normal People,” with which it shares some plot points. It is not as strong as the Rooney book but it has its charms (and laughs) and the struggles of the narrator in the latter portion of the book are quite affecting (and in one case damn creepy.)

Photo credit: Vlad Bagacian on Unsplash