I don’t know what to make of this book. I was intrigued when it popped up on Book of the Month because a lot of the reviews talk about how messed up the narrative is. It’s been compared to Sally Rooney, who I’ve been wanting to read, so I decided to try it out. I’d love to know if this is actually comparable to Sally Rooney from someone who’s read both though, because as much as I liked it, I need to emotionally prepare myself to read Sally Rooney if that is the case.

Adelaide is the unremarkable story of a white American girl who moves to London for her Masters degree and falls in love with both the city and a boy named Rory Hughes. Despite their initial attraction, Rory is emotionally unavailable and as Adelaide falls more and more in love with him, she gives up more of herself to this man who seems unable to love her back. After a shocking event sends both of them careening, their mental health suffers and both must learn how to cope and live in the world, with or without each other. 

I was expecting this story to be more shocking than it turns out to be. I was expecting either psychological trauma along the lines of Gone Girl or physical abuse. What you get instead is a very real story about a woman who gives too much of herself to a man incapable of appreciating it or walking a mile in her shoes. I hated Rory, but I loved the way he is portrayed. This is the kind of ongoing micro-abuse that is so hard to pinpoint and articulate in the moment. You can overlook an insensitive comment or an ignored text in isolation, but over time they add up to make a woman feel extremely neglected. The hurts are minor enough that any adverse reaction to them seems like an over-reaction or “crazy” behavior, but frequent enough that they will drive a person nuts over time.

Adelaide gives so much of herself to this man. He is generally only honest with her about his feelings and while that hurts, I think most people would say they prefer honesty to false proclamations of love. Rory is hurting, but he fails to acknowledge Adelaide’s own struggles and she completely empties her tank on a man who gives her no emotional support in return. He needs for Adelaide to always be a bright spot for him to lean on, without ever recognizing that Adelaide also has her own emotional needs. Read as a 300 page narrative, it’s easy to see where Rory goes wrong, but I do believe that as a lived experience, a lot of women excuse or overlook these kinds of behaviours.

So ultimately I think I did really like this. I got frustrated with Adelaide for putting up with Rory’s crap, but I never blamed her for it. I think it’s easy to get lost in your love for another person and she’s never been properly loved by a man in the past. She was also lacking in family support, but I loved the inclusion of so many meaningful female friendships in her life. I think the author really captured the unselfish nature of a really good friendship between women and captured the reality of those lost years in your 20’s when you’re finished school and trying to live as much of life as you can before inevitably having to “settle down”.

The only thing I didn’t really like is that I think the overall atmosphere of the book is a bit pretentious. I had no problem empathizing with Adelaide on an emotional level, but I also recognize that it is a very privileged experience to be able to run away to an expensive city like London to pursue higher education. Plus then she just walks out of a Master’s degree in literature and right into a prestigious publishing job? It was a little unbelievable and not relatable to many struggling millennials. Her and Rory are running around London going to the theatre and talking about high brow literary classics while the rest of their generation are struggling to find jobs that enable them to pay off loans and still be able to afford a place to live.

So it could be easy to dismiss Adelaide, but at the end of the day, she struggled with her mental health just like any other person (as did Rory). The difference is that Adelaide, as a woman, has been conditioned to ignore her pain, whereas Rory is content to wallow in it and lord his loss over Adelaide. 

So there you go, I guess I do know what to make about this book! One of the reasons I love writing reviews so much is because it gives me the opportunity to reflect on a book and it helps me to collect and process my thoughts. This is definitely not a must read book and it is incredibly sad, but if you feel like exercising your feelings and escaping deep into the psyche of another person, then check it out. Genevieve Wheeler definitely commits to this character and it makes for an impressive debut.