We Are All Made of Glue by Marina Lewycka
We Are All Made of Glue by Marina Lewycka
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I think Marina Lewycka has surpassed herself this time with We Are All Made of Glue. I’ve never enjoyed myself so much reading any novel, until this one. What I really mean is I’ve never laughed so much and at the same time flipped pages at the same time.
Georgie Sinclair has just broken up with her hunky husband Rip. He’s tall, heavily-built, with broad shoulders but a too big head, but still gorgeous to Georgie. In fact most of the men she meets throughout this book are of that ilk: the wickedly delectable Mr Diabello, his equally delicious partner in estate agency, Nick, Nathan her editor, and the pair of handsome Palestinian Uselesses, nephews to Mr Ali, a cuddly hamster of a man. All this comes across like some trashy romance novel because Lewycka, or rather, Georgie, has managed to transport some of the elements of Georgie’s novel she’s re-writing after a rejection that mentions the over-use of adjectives.
Georgie puts her wiles on Nathan but the shorter but still hunky Nathan is already in a relationship, with one Raoul. However she manages to put out for Diabello, allowing him to Velcro-strap her in the wrists to her bed and have his way with her while Rip is not living in her house anymore and her son Ben is not back from school yet. As slutty as she seems, Diabello is the only man, after Rip, she lets drop her red knickers for. By the way, Georgie uses her other black knickers on her head to keep the light out of her eyes while she sleeps.
In between all of this sex Georgie is also involved in, in no way sexually at all, with a woman. She first meets ancient Naomi outside her house riffling through her husband’s stuff that she’s thrown out. At the same time she also meets another male of a different kind, an absolutely macho Tom named Wonder Boy, who plays an important role in the outcome of the intrigue involving hospital care workers, social services and rival estate agents, all wrangling to have their claws on Naomi’s huge house Canaan House while she’s incapacitated in hospital and later in an old folk’s home. Georgie is steeped into helping Naomi prevent her house from being grabbed by these people, whom she manages to keep at bay by allowing Ali’s nephews stay in the house while they help repair and renovate it.
Thus Georgie has taken on many roles, as a hot forty-something babe rolling in the bed with Diabello, as a mother after this when Ben comes home from school, as Naomi’s friend and unofficial caretaker and next of kin and matchmaker to Nathan’s father Tati, as Queen of the Cats, with Naomi’s cats following behind her, as screaming, furious harridan when she catches Rip with another woman, as an adventurer plotting to help Naomi escape from the old folks home, as house-carer and occasionally sitter; and finally as a yet-unpublished romance writer taking on freelance work writing articles for a publication all about glue, Adhesives in the Modern World.
Despite Lewycka being an award winner of literary fiction, any reader who knows nothing of this would have a rollicking good read with this book, thinking it’s the best-written chick lit ever come across.
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