Review: On the Same Page

On the Same Page by Penelope Janu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Miles Franklin is the daughter of two literary writers (author and poet) but chose to become a lawyer instead. However, secretly she also writes historical romances under the pen name Emma Browning. Constantly harangued by her overbearing and narcissistic parents, Miles suffers crippling anxiety, she uses Emma as a crutch to lean upon and spends inordinate amounts of time rehearsing scenes from her books to make sure they are authentic (eg trying to make love in a moving horse-drawn carriage).

Miles' PA enters one of her books for the prestigious Australian Stapleton Prize for literature, when she wins the award her secret life threatens to become public, especially since the winner is obligated to do publicity and work with a prestigious publishing house.

What follows is a comedy of errors where Miles pretends to be Emma's lawyer and battles against Lars Kristensen, the new CEO of Iconic International Limited, a global publishing house which normally publishes high-brow fiction, poetry and non-fiction books, which sponsors the prize. Lars has been brought in from a non-publishing background to turn around the business, he sees the low-brow romances as a cash-cow to support the house's more important works and is determined to wring every drop of publicity from Emma. What makes it even more difficult is the visceral physical attraction that Miles feels whenever she is near Lars.

What can I say? This book expects the reader to, like Alice, believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. First, the idea that a publishing house could force an author to sign a contract which was so disadvantageous is ridiculous and, as a lawyer, Miles should have known that. Second, instead of renegotiating payment terms and a large advance, Miles tries to get the publisher to back out of the contract by requiring Lars to send her topless pictures and read all her previous novels. Third, Emma's writing is truly dire and her heroines appear to be TSTL. Also Miles' secret alter-ego appears to be the worst-kept secret in Australia! Don't even get me started on the pole-dancing.

Penelope Janu says that the first draft of this book was written when she was a Masters student in creative writing and TBH I think it shows, particularly the rather affected references to classic novels and novelists, it just screams 'I know stuff about Jane Austen and Madame Bovary, me'.

And yet, and yet, I did kind of like this despite all the things I hated. Lars faces Mr Darcy's dilemma of being drawn to Miles/Emma whilst also wanting to exploit her for the good of his failing company (which okay Mr Darcy's didn't want to do at all), and also finding her refusal to act the way he wanted. But then to be fair Miles/Emma's hot-and-cold relationship with Lars didn't make much sense either. Anyway, parts of this were a two star and parts were a four star, so it gets the average of three stars.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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