One's Company

What a ride. It seems awful to say it, but this is one of the most entertaining looks at trauma and its horrible lingering grasp that I've ever read. I've never seen Three's Company, but that didn't matter at all. It is described so vividly in the set and day to day life of our main character that I feel like I've watched most of it now. The main character is so wickedly unlikeable, I had to keep reminding myself she was living a trauma response and wasn't just an awful person. She might have been a little bit of an awful person too, but who's to say.

Bonnie Lincoln, in her early thirties, used to live in a trailer park and worked at the local store. She’s solitary, bitter—and with good reason: one after another she’d lost her father, her mother and then a surrogate family who briefly gave her a feeling of belonging somewhere. The store is now boarded up and, bit by bit, we learn the full extent of the awful thing that happened there. The aftermath is a mind recoiling in on itself, “trying to make sense of the senseless”.
    But then, at a stroke, her luck seems to have changed. She wins—bigtime—on the national lottery and is suddenly mega-rich: “ ‘Morris,’ I said, ‘How much money do I have now? Can you give me a figure?’ He did, and when he said the number show more out loud we both leaned backwards a little in its wake.” This is her chance to make a completely new life, to turn her dream into reality. But with Bonnie Lincoln it’s a dream unlike any other.
    This is an unusual novel, genuinely different, and I was reading it on the bus, or while eating (something I don’t normally do, ever), one of those books I couldn’t put down until I’d seen where the idea at its strange twisted heart was going to take us. The whole thing is told first-person and after a while you begin to wonder just how reliable as a narrator Bonnie is. But if she is telling us less than the truth, her unreliability is due more to self-deception than slyness. In places it was the sheer intensity of the writing that struck me, managing to put into words the rage of someone who the world just won’t leave in peace; expressing madness and hurt and a desperate, hopeless, impossible bid for escape.
    So what is the dream she uses her money to turn into bricks-and-mortar reality? Well, she’s long had an obsession with a TV sitcom from the 1970s and 80s called Three’s Company: there’s Janet Wood, Chrissy Snow and Jack Tripper sharing Apartment 201; their landlords the Ropers downstairs; their neighbours and friends. “It felt familiar and reassuring, yet I could find something new to love every time. It took place in a time period I would never truly understand…there would always be something unreachable about it…” A little self-contained world in other words. Somewhere safe. So with a small fraction of her winnings she buys a large house set in its own grounds in a remote mountain location, and sets about reconstructing the Three’s Company apartment building—every last doorbell, wall-print and pot-plant. Her plan is not just to re-create it though, not just to get the atmosphere right, nor even to then go and live in it. It’s far more: it’s to completely, absolutely, disappear into it, as if into the past or another universe, to sever all contact with the rest of the human race, utterly and permanently—to vanish.
    And for a while at least, it works too…more or less… show less

Some serious writing chops here! The topic is very difficult though - like Eleanor Oliphant and Sorrow and Bliss, this book is dark humor that feels like it shouldn't be humor because of the degree of mental illness involved. But it also does a great job of peeling back the layers of issues that can start a person down a path of instability. The narrator, Bonnie Lincoln, has suffered some devastating loss and trauma and the thing that helped her get through it was the 70s sitcom, Three's Company (which I was not initially allowed to watch, because it was deemed 'inappropriate'). Though Bonnie is living in our current era, she has become completely immersed in the show - buying the complete DVD set (and a back-up) and various items of show more memorabilia. "Once I discovered Three's Company, I understood I could take the chaos of the universe and put a recognizable, finite face on it, the ultimate pareidolia" (142) Then Bonnie wins the lottery - an 'obscene amount of money' and decides to live in the sitcom, buying remote land and reconstructing the set in exhaustive detail, with a small army of 'caseworkers' hired, to make it happen. Bonnie is so desirous of being completely alone in this fantasy world, that everyone must sign NDAs, and she has an attorney who handles everything and a grocery delivery boy (also with an NDA) and once it is complete, she shuts out the outside world and moves into Apartment 205 as each of the various characters whom she impersonates (inhabits?) for at least a year each, working through the various TV seasons. But the real world can't be held at bay - and it comes crashing to her door in a couple forms. Most persistent and most contentious is her lifelong friend Krystal who is also tied to the trauma and loss Bonnie yearns to escape. By the end, Bonnie's reality becomes severely altered and it is hard for even the reader to discern what is actual. Tricky premise - a bit of a stretch in believability and sympathy for Bonnie is hard-won. The ending is tricky too, but pretty true to the whole story. Fantastic writing is what carried this along for me. For example: When the project is complete: "I had arrived. I felt the apartment's air wash over me like a baptism, ushering me into a new state of being. Every molecule rarefied, sacred, as in a church or ancient cave, something deep and mysterious and spiritual. Undeniably transformative." (106) "Time was a river that carried me away from events in the recent past that I had not yet assimilated as reality, and in its waters these memories could easily drown, sucked under by the current of repeating days, seasons, weeks, routines. I've often wondered if it's the same in a convent, or a prison." (223) show less

4.5⭐️

“The world was so haphazard and frightening, why not arrange it the way I wanted it? Why not?”

Our protagonist Bonnie Lincoln finds solace in watching reruns of Three’s Company, a popular sitcom originally aired between 1977-1984, after a traumatic event that alters her life irrevocably. Some years down the line, when she comes into a large sum of money after winning the lottery she decides to leave everything and everyone behind and create her alternate reality, modeling her new life along the lines of her favorite television show.

"Other people can ruin a dream just by knowing it."

What starts with purchasing property in a secluded location and building a replica of the apartment shared by the main cast members evolves show more into creating a facsimile of the whole world of the television show down to the minutest detail and acting out the lives of her favorite characters, turn by turn, while maintaining minimal contact with the outside world.

“Three’s Company was a door into a new way of life, an immersion into a different decade, into lives and histories that were different from my own, into a family that could not be broken.”

As the narrative progresses, we see how Bonnie gradually immerses herself into her new world but will she truly find what she is looking for? Will her meticulously planned illusion truly provide the comfort and security she craves?

"I planned to manipulate time itself, to escape it and warp it, bend it to my will."

Narrated by Bonnie in the first person, One's Company by Ashley Hutson is an intense and immersive experience. I have never read anything like this before. The premise is so unique and the writing is excellent. Parts of it are difficult to read especially in parts where we bear witness to Bonnie’s traumatic past and her loneliness. The author addresses some important themes in this book such as trauma, depression and mental health. In Bonnie, the author creates a flawed individual who is unable to navigate her way through the loss and darkness in her life. Many of us have dealt with grief by seeking refuge in television, movies and books and I could fully empathize with Bonnie’s need for solitude and her need to create a safe space for herself. But after a point, the story takes a bizarre turn and some moments are quite disturbing, the ending in particular. Though the story is unrealistic and far-fetched, to say the least, I found this hard to put down.

"It was always easier, talking to someone who wasn’t there. Who was dead. I tried not to do it too often, but funny things happen sometimes, when a person is alone."

I remember watching Three’s Company as a child ( or rather sneaking peeks while my late father watched it ) in the 80s. I’ll admit to sometimes catching the reruns broadcast on television even now. The show and the humor never cease to make me laugh (I try not to judge a show from the 70s based on present-day sensibilities). Now I’ll be thinking about this book every time I hear the theme song. I'm not sure how I feel about that. show less

I finally broke my Icelandic streak!

This was pretty dope. Psychological absurdity about someone exorcising their trauma by living inside a reconstructed version of the Three's Company set. Kinda reminded me of Palahniuk, but lonelier. Read it in an afternoon, would recommend.

I suspect this book just isn't for me. I'm DNFing a third of the way through.

What I will say is that the book is so soaked in grief, the back cover copy does the book and readers a disservice by making it sound as if they might be moving into a more surreal or absurdist, or even light-hearted (if they remember Three's Company anyway) read. Instead, the combination of debilitating grief (in terms of being a part of society, anyway) and a character who's not likeable end up leaving readers mired in the negativity, particularly since it's primarily a character-driven work.

I'm sure plenty of readers will really enjoy this, but I'm not one of them, and I doubt I'll be picking up another book by Hutson.

3.25
Super weird book about trauma, depression, family, delusional disassociation & Three’s Company.
This was so much darker than I anticipated & the ending you are left wondering what’s real & what isn’t.
Contains harm to animals.