Book Review — Rosie Dunne by Cecelia Ahern

I can't believe I'm publishing a THIRD article today (well, actually, it's the first article today and the third in 24 hours, but whatever), but there is something about a really good book that guarantees a late night for me. I feel no shame in admitting that every Harry Potter book that has been released has kept me up until at least 1 in the morning because I couldn't put it down once I had reached the last 100 or so pages. A good storyline (especially if it involves romance in its more innocent forms—not so much the "throbbing member" variety) and conversational style will keep me hooked until the end. And finishing a particularly good example of this will inevitably bring about the urge to share it with the world.

In the building where I live, the residents take many of their leftover books and other random no-longer-wanted belongings and leave them in the mailroom for other residents to adopt at their leisure. It was here that I found, among the various computer manuals for software that was obsolete 5 years ago (did someone have a book for Mac OS 7.6?) and social commentary books from a ways back that I discovered a pink, über-girly bookjacket with the title Rosie Dunne. The description (and cover—while I'm not super-femmy, I do love the design of most Chick Lit books—and yes, it is officially a genre) hooked me immediately, as did the fact that I was going to shoot someone if I read another book about what I do for a living. The book is about two best friends who are completely in love with each other, but can never seem to admit it at the right time, and the entire story (with the exception of the epilogue, which is the first place you see anything approaching a narrator) is told as a series of e-mails, instant message conversations, letters, postcards and various correspondence among all the characters in the book.

Reading this book was like being a fly on a wall in someone's life. You know that feeling, when you know something's happening and you really want to be in on it? It's very much the same thing. It goes from hysterically funny to sad to frustrating back to funny again in rapid succession, and you follow the two main characters, Rosie and Alex, from the age of 5 to about 60, while also seeing the perspectives of their families and friends, including Rosie's daughter Katie, who mirrors the same situation Rosie is in with her best friend Toby.

The basic plot is this: Rosie and Alex have been best friends in Dublin since the age of 5. They are inseperable from that point forward (except for one annoying bit on Alex's 10th birthday) until at the age of 17, Alex's father gets a job in Boston and the family is forced to move. The two are devastated, maintain a long-distance friendship during their last year, and Alex promises to come home for the debs (think Irish prom), only to be delayed indefinitely by flight issues, resulting in Rosie having to go to the debs with a boy she calls Brian the Whine. She gets trashed, forgets what happened the next day, and realizes what happened when she learns she's pregnant. She cancels her plans to go to Boston College for hotel management to raise her daughter.

Although I will warn this book is not likely to make the average man's top list (I was gushing about it to Nick with very little response other than "yep—it's definitely a girl book."), I have to strongly recommend it. It's a fun, lighthearted read, a very quick one as well, and this is some of the strongest character development I've seen in quite a while. I highly recommend it as a summer read, or even just as a book to distract you from all the other books you SHOULD be reading because you'd be LEARNING something from them.