From Amazon.co.uk
Anna Maxted is not one to shy away from difficult and emotionally traumatic issues. Here in
Behaving Like Adults she tackles date rape having dealt with bereavement in her first book,
Getting Over It, and with eating disorders in her second novel,
Running In Heels. It sounds grim--"doomed chick lit"--but the joy of Anna Maxted's books (and they are joyful, despite everything) is the humour and sympathy of her writing.
The heroine of this story is Holly, who runs a dating agency. She split up with Nick, her childish boyfriend of five years, because "he didn't know how to make an effort in a relationship" (he lives on "hygiene's edge" not washing or talking enough, and being a generally lacklustre dating companion). She decides to throw a party to celebrate the success of her business and chooses rich and arrogant Stuart as her date for the evening. He brings Holly home, pushes her to the floor, and rapes her, and she doesn't tell anyone. As she says: "as long as I skated along the surface of my composure, I was fine. There was more underneath, I knew, but it was dark and cold and deathly and I refused to go there."
The rest of the novel deals with the repercussions of the rape, with Holly trying to carry on as normal, but being unable to. She is forced to redefine her life and her relationships, especially with Nick. Behaving Like Adults is well observed, moving, funny and intensely readable. --Eithne Farry
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
The heroine of Maxted's third comic confessional (after Running in Heels) is 29-year-old Holly, the incurably optimistic founder of a London dating agency called Girl Meets Boy. The agency is a hit, but, natch, Holly has her own boy troubles: her ex-fiance, Nick, takes his time moving out, and in the meantime infuriates her with his resolutely boyish sensibility (he makes his living dressing up as Mr. Elephant at children's parties). Holly sets herself up with Stuart, a promising applicant at her agency who turns out to be very different from what she imagined: he rapes her on their first date. The experience leaves her so numb and confused that she's not even sure it was rape, and comes up with heartbreaking rationalizations ("Well, here's the truth-I'm so ashamed I'm almost too embarrassed to say-but while he pinned me down, I held my stomach in. See? That proves it. If a woman is being you know, she wouldn't hold in her stomach"). She becomes depressed, makes bad business decisions, fights with her sister Claudia and bewildered friend Rachel and makes the bizarre choice to see Stuart again. Worst of all, she can't trust anyone anymore. Holly's road back to happiness is a long one, not helped by Stuart suing her for defamation when she eventually goes public with the facts. Maxted takes Holly's ordeal seriously, but her attempts to keep a light tone come off awkwardly. To Maxted's credit, Holly never becomes pitiful or self-dramatizing, but the author sometimes errs on the side of glibness, making this an oddly breezy read punctuated by jarring moments of anguish.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
