Getting Rid of Matthew

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I usually love Jane Fallon the way she creates interesting characters, allows a bond to develop, drops a bombshell about them which makes you question your morals and then makes you hate/love them before ensure their worlds collide with a harsh dose of reality and a serving of justice. With that said, I think Fallon also has a deft touch when it comes to characterisation. She writes strong and real female characters, who are bitchy and loving by turn. Those that are mothers have warm and realistic relationships with their children, who are also written well. I really enjoyed the first part of the book where the savage office relationship between Rebecca and Lorna is explored. Lorna is a hateful character, memorable, spiteful and with a fantastic turn in passive aggressive behaviour. I had the urge to throttle her, and, as far as I'm concerned, if an author makes you have a visceral reaction like that to a character then they are doing a fine job. urn:lcp:gettingridofmatt0000fall_w4q7:epub:16b421be-ec38-4d91-a82e-bb03fd4136d6 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier gettingridofmatt0000fall_w4q7 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t6s005b5j Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781846178801

Her previous novels have focussed on the wronged woman, but this book seems to change tact because the wronged woman in this story is actually the one we see least of all. I expected for Isabel to feature heavily in the book but she’s in only around 5 or 6 scenes in total, and even then not for very long. Therefore, while I sympathised with her I couldn’t necessarily feel much for her character. Fallon instead chooses to focus on Alex and Lorna in the book, and their relationship with Rebecca. This made for an interesting dynamic and shows us how hard it can be bringing a new person into an established friendship group.

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Rebecca and Daniel are happily married, and love their life together with their two children. They’ve known their best friends Alex and Isabel since they were at University and they’ve always done everything as a Foursome, from getting married to babies and even group holidays. Fallon gets her characters into situations that seem impossible to get out of, stretching the limits of the reader’s expectations constantly. I found myself saying, “I have no idea how she’s going to get out of this one” and, “I can’t believe that just happened!” many times throughout the novel. Any book that truly takes me by surprise is appreciated by me, but a book that continuously keeps me on my toes with absolutely no clue as to how the characters’ situations will resolve – or whether they will at all – is refreshingly brilliant.

Here's a brief outline of the plot without giving too much away. Helen is approaching 40 and finds herself in a long-term affair with her boss Matthew, who is married and much older than her. PLAN B: Accidentally on purpose bump into his wife Sophie. Give yourself a fake name and identity. Befriend Sophie. Actually begin to really like Sophie. Snog Matthew's son (who's the same age as you by the way. You're not a paedophile). Buy a cat and give it a fake name and identity. Befriend Matthew's children. Unsuccessfully. Watch your whole plan go absolutely horribly wrong. Helen demands more of his time, but initially he refuses to leave his wife Sophie and his two daughters and Helen is left frustrated and alone in her flat with just her TV dinners for company. Two months later, having been told by the English and History of Art departments that they would give her a place but only for the following academic year, she switched to History because they said "start tomorrow". She got a third.She then worked for several years as a script editor before ending up as the series script editor at EastEnders. Later she met Tony Garnett at World Productions, who was in talks with the BBC about a new show, This Life, about a group of young solicitors living in the capital. What to do if Matthew, your secret lover of the past four years, finally decides to leave his wife Sophie and their two daughters and move into your flat, just when you're thinking that you might not want him anymore . . . If only she could have Matthew... not an odd weekends and couple hours here and there, but all to herself, so that the could be a family... On leaving, she was unemployed for 18 months and trying to ignore the job advertisements which her father used to cut out of the paper and send to her, when one arrived which was for a Girl Friday in a Theatrical and Literary Agency. She got the job. However, Helen is then stunned when Matthew finally decides to leave Sophie and moves into his flat - and it's at this point that Helen realises she no longer wants him . . .

She was educated at St Bernard's Convent School in Slough, Berkshire, and University College London, where she studied history, graduating with a bachelor of arts in 1982. [3] Alongside her studies, she started writing for the history department's magazine, for the university newspaper, London Student, and for Pi Magazine. [4] Career [ edit ] a b c d UCL 11 February, 2020, "Top novelist and television producer Jane Fallon awarded UCL Honorary Fellowship" Foursome, despite the title, is NOT erotica. The foursome referred to is a group of friends, two couples, who have known each other and been the mainstay of each others social lives for many years. When one of the marriages breaks up (Alex and Isabel), it has far reaching consequences and causing Rebecca to reexamine whether she every really knew them or anyone for that matter. There is another storyline in the book which revolves around Rebecca’s job and her interactions with a co-worker, Lorna. That particular storyline sums up very accurately why women are their own worst enemies as far as professional lives. I have watched these kind of relationships/interactions in places I have worked and it never ends well. I thought that part of the book was very accurately done. Sharp, Rob (13 March 2010). "My secret life: Jane Fallon, author & TV producer, 49". Independent. London . Retrieved 11 August 2022.But let's be clear: Helen is not painted as an innocent woman. She knows her affair is wrong, but while caught up in it the mind works differently: this, to me, felt absolutely real and true to human nature and the way our emotions and minds work. There's such clarity about Helen and Sophie, whose perspectives dominate the narrative (Matthew gets a few bits throughout, but it's largely told from the two women's perspectives). And when Helen "wakes up" to her life, the lies she lives and the damage she's done, she's even more real. How do you get rid of a boyfriend you're no longer interested in, but who seems like they'd fall apart if you tried to break it off? I've certainly experienced that before, and Helen's distaste for Matthew's personal habits once he lives with her, once it becomes "real" rather than an affair, is comical because it's so familiar. Fallon does a fine job of balancing sympathy with "just desserts": Helen does deserve it, after all.

My problems came when Rebecca decided that, rather than tell her bosses that Lorna was going through big personal issues that kept her from work (the normal way to deal with a work issue), she decides to perform a series of lies and charades to pretend that everything is fine with Lorna's performance. This just wouldn't happen, and I could not suspend my disbelief. At all. I found myself rolling my eyes at the behaviour of many of the characters.Helen is single heading towards her 40-s birthday. She is hopelessly in love with a married man, who is also her boss. Helen's job is less than exciting, she is a PA, a glorified secretary with mundane monotonous tasks. Her flats is small and dump, her perspectives in life generally do not make her happy. After her studies, she began working for a theatrical literary agency. After a few years there, she decided to become a freelance script reader and script editor for different theatrical productions and television, and in 1994, she advanced to become a producer on the series EastEnders. This was followed by a number of awarded series, such as This Life, 20 Things to Do Before You're 30, and Teachers. [4] However, for my own part I must say sorry Jane but I think it may be a fundamental flaw in my personality that if I don't like the people involved then I don't really want them to have a happy ending. In real life good things don't always happen to good people (in my experience they often get dumped on from a great height instead) and bad people often get away with murder but I prefer my fiction to create a nicer world than that- a world where people are rewarded for their actions.