Boy Meets Girl
To most people, Meg Cabot is synonymous with two words: Princess Diaries. Having been of the same opinion till I stumbled upon another book of hers at Blossoms Book House, I now think she’s brilliant.
I picked up Boy Meets Girl almost seven years ago. And in all these years, I’ve read and re-read the book more times than I care to count on my fingers. Two things worked for me wonderfully: one, that it’s different from the formula ‘love at first sight-ups and downs-followed by happy endings’ reads that one expects to find in such books. Two, the ingenious way in which she tells her story – using to-do-lists, diary entries, Instant Messages and Voice Mail recordings. I have never seen any author quite use those modes of communication to tell a story the way she has.
Kate Mackenzie is a Human Resources personnel at a big newspaper daily with Amy Jenkins, a Bulimic, 30-plus, obsessive Delta Pi sorority woman for a boss. Kate’s troubles begin when Amie wants her to fire Ida Lopez, the dessert cart lady at work, for not giving her fiancé Stuart – who happens to be the legal face of the newspaper – a lemon pie. A lawsuit follows, where Kate finds herself supporting Ida (much to her own chagrin) and slowly falling for Ida’s lawyer, who also happens to be Stuart’s brother. It’s everything a modern-day love story is bound to be: a web of misunderstandings filled to the brim with alcoholic stupors, office romances and a truckload of complications. Oh, and let’s not forget Kate’s ex-boyfriend – lead singer of the band I’m Not Making Any More Sandwiches.
Throw in a family of rich New Yorkers who have spent half their life in jail, a woman who’s as fond of runway fashion as she is of bedtime playmates, a model who dates men based on questionnaires she gets answered from their ex-girlfriends, as well as siblings who get the fundamentals of emotional blackmail bang on, and it’s at least two hours of non-stop amusement for both, men and women.
There isn’t too much to the plot, but the insights into our everyday behavior are hilarious, and the characters rich with life. It’s the kind of reading you want to do on a rainy day, curled up on the sofa with a soft duvet warming your feet and a toe-curling feeling of happiness ready to take over your senses. Heck, it’s the kind of reading you want to do when you want to escape heavy thoughts and feel good about yourself. And who isn’t game for feeling that way?
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