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Dreamy Imogen feels the pressure to marry her kind, considerate fiancé, even when life is taking an unexpected turn. The Garnett Girls, the captivating debut from Georgina Moore, asks whether children can ever be free of the mistakes of their parents.
As a whole, the sketch was well executed—the “dinosaur” interlude was a particularly cute addition—but it offered nothing new by way of commentary on the meme, which at this point has already been played out across social media. Plus, there’s nothing really subversive about saying, essentially, that men obsess over history while women look at their horoscopes. In fact, it’s a little reductive. Then the sketch cut to what the men were thinking. What was on their mind: The Roman empire, of course. Yes, it was maybe a couple of months delayed, but the rap song that ensued was about the meme that men are almost always pondering the details of the Roman empire. The night’s host, Jason Momoa, took the lead: “Five times a day it pops into my dome, which reminds me: They invented the dome. Just one of the reasons that I think about Rome.”
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An assured first novel… this immersive saga probes the traumas all families conceal. It is a novel of appetite… readers will down greedily’ The Sunday Times Years later, charismatic Margo entertains lovers and friends in her cottage on the Isle of Wight, refusing to ever speak of Richard and her painful past. But her silence is keeping each of the Garnett girls from finding true happiness.
And wild, passionate Sasha, trapped between her fractured family and controlling husband, is weighed down by a secret that could shake the family to its core… Flawed, complicated, secretive, big-hearted, you'll fall in love with the Garnett girls. Margo and Richard's love affair was the stuff legends are made of - forbidden, passionate, all-encompassing. But ultimately, doomed. When Richard walked out, Margo shut herself away from the world, leaving her three daughters, Rachel, Imogen and Sasha, to run wild. Rachel is desperate to return to London, but is held hostage by responsibility for Sandcove, their beloved but crumbling family home. Having finally put the past behind her, the charismatic Margo holds court in her cottage on the Isle of Wight, refusing to ever speak of Richard. But her silence is keeping each of the Garnett girls from finding true happiness. The eldest, Rachel, is desperate to return to London, but is held hostage by responsibility for Sandcove, their beloved but crumbling family home. Imogen, the dreamy middle child, feels the pressure to marry her kind, considerate fiance, even when her life is taking an unexpected turn. And wild, passionate Sasha, the baby, trapped between her increasingly alienated family and her controlling husband, has unearthed the secret behind Richard's departure... and when she reveals it, the effects are devastating.Moore finds wry humour in her protagonists’ dilemmas, conjures a beguiling sense of place, and wrings emotional depth out of the women’s fractious relationships with each other’ The Times A brilliant debut and powerful tale of sisterhood and home, set on the beautiful beaches of the Isle of Wight... But perhaps the night’s strangest take on gender came near the end of the show. In a riff on Netflix’s Untold documentary series, Sarah Sherman appeared as the fictional tennis player Charna Lee Diamond, who, in this version, had a battle-of-the-sexes tournament before Billie Jean King did. Except Charna wasn’t so successful. She challenged a man to a match and got paired up with Momoa as Ronnie Dunster, who “at the time was the largest man to ever play tennis.” The gross-out gruesomeness of the sketch distinguished it, but it was ultimately just another reminder of how big Momoa is, and, in turn, how manly. The underlying sentiment: Come on, a girl can’t beat that guy.
The episode did not get all that more insightful as it went on. Later, Momoa played the hunky ex-fiancé of a woman portrayed by Chloe Fineman. She had thought him dead after a plane explosion, but he returned from being stranded on an island sexier than ever, much to the dismay of her new spouse (Andrew Dismukes). She was smitten, and it was an easy gag, a showcase of Momoa’s strong, wild-man persona and not much more. When a Saturday Night Live parody song begins, there’s usually a moment of anticipation where you wonder what the punch line is going to be. That was the case last night as a group of female cast members began a ballad about their aloof spouses, one wondering, “Is he dreaming of another woman he wants more than me?” With the burly Momoa, there to promote his latest turn as the DC superhero Aquaman, SNL’s writers had a paragon of muscle-bulging masculinity to deploy. The “Rome Song” sketch was just one of many where they used Momoa’s quintessential dudeness to offer some—sometimes amusing, sometimes overly simplistic—comedy on gender tropes. That’s where it verged into absurdism. When Ronnie served, the ball literally went through Charna, leaving a bleeding hole in the center of her stomach. She screamed, “Did I ruin it for women?” She pressed on. Her head came off with his second serve. Charna tried to change history and died doing it.With Moore’s evocative prose it’s easy to see why The Garnett Girls is being likened to works by… Penny Vincenzi and Maeve Binchy’ The Observer Forbidden, passionate and all-encompassing, Margo and Richard’s love affair was the stuff of legend– but, ultimately, doomed. Richard leaving left Margo unable to function for an entire year after the loss of her all consuming, life altering passion and once in a lifetime love as she retreats to her bedroom, leaving the girls to fend for themselves, with the young Rachel, sacrificing her childhood to ably shoulder the adult responsibilities of taking care of them and Sandcove, with the help of Aunt Sylvia. We learn of how Margo and Richard got together, with Margo having to fight for their love in the face of her mother's disapproval. In the present, with Richard's name forbidden through the years, Rachel is living in the crumbling Sandcove with her family, feeling an underlying discontent with her life, Margo still treats it as her home, still organising parties that people want to attend. However, Gabriel is content here, so how does she persuade him to move to London? Imogen finds her plans to marry William go awry, whilst Sasha is seething with resentment and a secret that is eating away at her and an ageing Margo begins to reflect on her current lifestyle and its impact on her girls.
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