You, Me and the Movies (Paperback)

Arden Hall is a woman whose has certainly lived. Or has she? When she makes a discovery on a hospital ward it means that everything she has believed needs rethinking. So far, so normal for a novel. What makes this novel standout is the films, the memories that are evoked of a love, a year and a half of loving someone. This is a novel in which entire crucial conversations can take place in films; well known, lingering images in the mind which just hit the spot. Arden has watched The List of films with a special man - Mac - and she can never forget. Laughter and tears, romance and hurt, love and regret, everything is in a novel that keeps the reader enthralled. As it flips from a remembered love to an intense present, this a celebration of film and love. I was delighted to have the opportunity to read and review this entertaining novel. Arden has escaped from an abusive relationship and is in a job which she finds predictable, despite the fact that it is in television. Her son Julian is still close to her, but she has avoided other friendships, even with Becky, who she has known since university. It is on a rare occasion that she agrees to visit another friend when she recognises another patient, Mac Bartley - Thomas. She was eighteen when they originally met, and in alternating chapters she remembers their relationship at Warwick University. It was founded on the films that they watched together, as he was a lecturer in Film Studies. Being badly injured in a road accident has left Mac virtually unable to speak, but at the end of every visit he manages a brief reference to a film on the List they watched. They enjoyed Fatal Attraction, Casablanca, and others, as she comments on the feminist implications as they enjoy their intense meetings. Arden is desperate for their relationship, especially as she struggled with her own family. Her mother has styled herself as “Marilyn” as in Monroe, and is an incredibly demanding woman. Having been named for a character in a Monroe film, Arden has survived her difficult childhood partly through obsessively watching films, and it is partly because of her interest that she targets Mac. As she recalls that happy time, their adventures together and the need for secrecy, she contrasts their affair with her marriage to the controlling Christian, and how she changed as a person. She meets James, a neighbour of Mac’s and begins to enjoy her regular hospital visits, especially as she finds purpose in her life with the reminders of the special films Mac briefly alludes to at the end of each visit. It is the films which provide much of the power to this novel, as each one has special resonance for an aspect of Arden’s life, both then and now. This is a funny, sometimes moving book, which handles both time periods particularly successfully. It is easy to believe in the fashionable student, enjoying an illicit relationship with a married man, and the sad, disappointed woman she has become as a result of relationships which could never replace the first heady love. This is an enjoyable and and entertaining read, and I thoroughly recommend it to those who are fond of twentieth century films as well as sparky romance.