Ralph's Party

Product Information

Meet the residents of the London brownstone on 31 Almanac Road who together weave a tangled web of romance. Ralph, a ne'er-do-well artist, suddenly realizes he's head over heels in love with his new flatmate Jem, the most fun and sensible girl he's ever encountered. Unfortunately, Ralph's best friend, Smith, has already won Jem's affections, although Smith has not entirely given up his passion for the femme fatale, Cheri, who lives upstairs. Across the hall, Karl and Siobhan have been happily unmarried for years, until Karl gets a smashing job as a London rush-hour DJ and momentarily gets tempted into Cheri's cozy lair. These six star-crossed tenants become more enamored, and more confused, as the story progresses-until their true destinies are revealed on one crucial night-the evening of the extravaganza that is . . . Ralph's party. This wonderfully hip new novel was an instant popular success when it was first published in England, and American readers are sure to be captivated by the debut of a talented new writer.

I won’t continue with what happens through the book as I don’t want to spoil it if you are thinking of reading, but all I will say is I don’t recommend and if you want to read Lisa Jewell, I would recommend these by her instead as they are all a thousand times better: I did read to the end as I soooo wanted to find some glimmer of the sort of story I was expecting, but it was not to be. Jem & co remained unappealing throughout & the they all live happy ever after style ending was a cop out. After all that had gone on? A wedding would NOT have been on the cards in my world....

Summary

There are several more incidents of this sort of selfish behaviour that made me thoroughly dislike them both. They came across as the epitome of pampered London types, used to getting their own way, using others without thought of the consequences and so forth, and I really didn't like either of them. Ralph, one of the flat mates in the apartment where the story is focused, goes into his new flatmate’s room and reads her diary. Then he smells her bra and talks in detail about how she was hiding her cup size well. And all of this is just in the first 10% of the book. Because I didn’t read Ralph’s Party before reading After The Party, I can’t particularly say if Jem and Ralph are the same in the sequel as they were in the prequel. It’s been such a long time that I simply can’t remember their character traits. Both Ralph and Jem have obviously grown up though in the years since we left Ralph’s Party. I admit that I really liked both Ralph and Jem. Yes, they were a tad annoying at times – Ralph running off to California, for one, and Jem getting a bit gooey over Joel another – but it’s obvious to see that they both still love each other, it’s just that they don’t talk about anything. Ever. It seems that, for the most point, that a good banging together of heads may have sorted a lot out. (It wouldn’t have been as good a book, admittedly.) Jem and Ralph are the only recurring characters in the book – the rest seem to flit in and out at will: Lulu, Jem’s sister, Joel, the single dad Jem befriends, Smith and Rosey, Ralph’s best friend and Smith’s girlfriend, a few of the characters from Ralph’s Party appear but not in any real way and only fleetingly. ABOUT THIS BOOK: Meet the residents of the London brownstone on 31 Almanac Road who together weave a tangled web of romance. Ralph, a ne'er-do-well artist, suddenly realizes he's head over heels in love with his new flatmate Jem, the most fun and sensible girl he's ever encountered. Unfortunately, Ralph's best friend, Smith, has already won Jem's affections, although Smith has not entirely given up his passion for the femme fatale, Cheri, who lives upstairs. Across the hall, Karl and Siobhan have been happily unmarried for years, until Karl gets a smashing job as a London rush-hour DJ and momentarily gets tempted into Cheri's cozy lair. Lisa Jewell lives in North London. While on holiday a friend made her a drunken bet: dinner at her favourite restaurant if she wrote three chapters of a novel. Just over a year later Ralph's Party was finished. In a similar style to Marian Keyes' Rachel’s Holiday, Ralph’s Party introduces the residents of 31 Almanac Road, a three-storey Edwardian house in South London. The house, divided into flats and its inhabitants are the focus of this contemporary, romantic novel. Ralph and Smith, who live in the basement flat are beginning to doubt that they will ever find a suitable flatmate until Jemima comes along. In fact, Jem finds herself more than suitable when both Ralph and Smith fall for her. Karl and Siobhan live in the flat above and they have been together in total happiness for fifteen years. That was until Cheri, the cold, calculating but very sexy lady in the top flat sets her sights on Karl.

Tony is with Ness, but he really wants Milly. Milly has confided in him about what an ass Sean is being about the baby. Sean has confided in him about how he doesn't really want a baby. Tony told Sean to grow up. They have a dinner one evening and things comes to blows between Sean and Milly and Sean leaves. Ness goes to bed and leaves Tony alone with Milly. Tony tells Milly how wonderful he thinks she is and they kiss. Then Tony realizes he doesn't really want Milly and that them doing anything would be a huge mistake. And all of a sudden, he's over his crush. He makes love to Ness that night and professes his love, but in his head, it was just something he said not something he meant. He breaks up with Ness. Ness is close to mom so she heads to her house, but mom is out. Only Ned is there. Ned comforts her and realizes how great she is. He decides to escort her to the party. However, the saving grace was the author's fantastic sense of relateability. The moments when the kids are acting up. When Jem is trying to cope with a stinking hangover and has to get up at 6am to sort out the baby. When she's gossiping with women in a posh bar. All of these moments were so beautifully written that I almost felt I was there. This is not what I was expecting from Lisa Jewell. The previous Lisa Jewell books I've read were suspense thrillers, this was more a love triangle and it wasn't thrilling in any way. Sean proposes to Milly, she says "yes". They announce it to the family on her first meeting the parents. Then Milly finds out she's pregnant. Sean isn't so happy about it. He likes their life of bar-hopping and recreational drug use. She wants to keep it and Sean starts avoiding her under the pretense of writing his book. He get the idea to write about how women make all the decisions in the world because they are the only ones to decide to keep a baby. It's also interesting for me in that Ralph's Party was very much set in the approach to 1997, the arse-end of a pretty bad recession and a moribund Tory-led Britain before the expectation of a New Labour victory. This one is set literally after that party. Not exactly that you notice it much in the text -- she's not a political writer or anything of the sort, but it's interesting that she dabbles fleetingly in religion and the spiritual, and even hints that the jollies the central couple used to get was sort of, well, vacuous. The good times are gone.

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A big, special mention to the narrator, Imogen Church. She gives the characters the right, emotional tone for their situations. She makes them annoying and insufferable, and then calm and restrained. She goes up and down with them and you can almost feel them coming out of your speakers. She's just fantastic and now I'll look for more of her work. The first time I'll look for a narrator, not necessarily an author. I am still wondering why I thought this might be a good book. Absolutely horrible. Horrible characters, I couldn't like any of them, horrible plot. Ned finds high school sweetheart, but she's all grown up and over him now. Ned's Australia girl starts sending him pieces of herself (hair, toenails, eyelashes, etc.) in the mail and texting him "cunt" over and over. He finally writes a letter to her parents and we never hear anything more from her. Ned finally decides he needs to get a job and starts working for a temp agency. He meets a girl on the job and they hit it off, but when Ned makes a move, she turns him down stating that he hasn't grown up yet. Ned and Gervase are get close.