I Like It Like That

I like Claire Calman and I have read both of her previous offerings ‘Love is a Four Letter Word’ and ‘Lessons for a Sunday Father’ and they were both quite cool. She writes about people in relationships that they are content with but not happy with who meet people who are better suited to them but will shake them out of their complacent content lives and this is no exception. With the early death of her mother in the background Georgia becomes the mother to her sister and brother, going into counselling was logical because of the role she had taken in her family life. Full of fully realised believable characters and recognisably bad family moments it’s an engaging read. Okay so the Sunday morning bath went on until the book show more ran out 8) show less

After finishing "Love is a four-letter-word" in a matter of hours, I immediately ordered Claire Calman's other books. "I like it like that" was the one I got to first, & in many ways it didn't disappoint. But if I were to be honest, I'd have to agree with other reviewers- "Love is a four-letter-word" is a little bit better. And I think, for a very simple reason: Bella & Will are both drawn really clarly in that book, with us knowing them well when we get to the last page. On the other hand, here, in "I like it like that", we get to know Georgia, Ellen & the whole family well...but not Leo or Stephen.

OK, the story: Georgia is a counsellor, lives in a tinier-than-tiny flat in London, has a great big noisy, chaotic but lovely family & a show more fiance who's the complete opposite: Stephen is uptight, pretentious, bossy, predictable, organized & tidy & worst of all boring. Georgia is also a perfectionist & a tidiness-freak, but apart from that, I couldn't really see (during the whole book) what on earth she found in Stephen, especially after she'd met Leo the Wonderful. That's basically why I felt the 2 men (as another reviewer mentioned) were kind of like plot devices. Not that this makes the book less enjoyable. It's just that "Love is a four-letter-word" was much more special.

What's really good about this book is Georgia's family. Georgia, Ellen & Matt have lost their mother when they were 10, & since then Georgia has kind of taken up the role of being the perfect, mother-like one (that explains her relationship with her younger sister). The book describes, in wonderful detail, the complicated relationship between Georgia & Ellen, & also between Georgia & her long-gone mother. These relationships are the strength of the book, & yes, of course, also the relationship between Georgia & Leo. Which, for my taste, develops in maddeningly slow pace, for no reason whatsoever (& Stephen doesn't count as a reason).

This kind of book is pure, undiluted fun & Claire Calman will go on writing, I hope, for years & years, giving us books such as these for those long, gloomy, rainy days.
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