Review: The Christmas Party

The Christmas Party by Carole Matthews
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Since this book is over a decade old I won't worry about spoilers.

The book practically takes place over the space of two days. The day of the Fossil Oil Christmas Party and the following day, Christmas Eve.

Louise Young is a single mother who has got a job as PA to one of Fossil Oil's up and coming executives, Sales Director Tyler Benson. Suspend disbelief that a young woman who worked at a bank pre-motherhood and then filled shelves in Boots suddenly lands a plum PA job in a fancy international oil firm - even if it has recently relocated its head office to Milton Keynes. Tyler Benson has a roving eye and a wandering hand, something that Louise is trying to avoid, although like men of that sort he doesn't get the message when she starts wearing baggy clothes. Tyler bases his success on the back of one of his junior sales team Josh Wallace, although she has only seen him a few times, Louise thinks Josh is nice, but she knows her friend Karen from Customer Accounts is hoping to hook up with him at the party.

Tyler is married to Kirsten who is starting to feel disillusioned with life. She has given up her career as a teacher to follow Tyler as he gets moved from one city to another at no notice and has nothing to show for it, no children, no career, no friends outside Fossil Oil, no home of her own. She also knows that Tyler has been unfaithful on numerous occasions and she is determined to get him to commit to making big changes in their lives. She also suspects, from the way Tyler drops her name into conversation, that he is having an affair with his new PA Louise.

Melissa is married to Lance Harvey. At sixty-six he is head of the UK branch of Fossil Oil and has been steadfastly resisting attempts to get him to retire. Melissa too has given up everything to follow Lance around the world, her two sons were put into boarding school from a young age because all the changing of schools was playing havoc with their education. Now they have little or no contact with their father and pursue 'worthy' or at least less 'worldly' careers (typical middle class wealthy kids type occupations - managing an orphanage in Nepal (because of course an orphanage in Bristol would be too too dull) and teaching surfing in summer and snowboarding in winter). Although they are both American, having lived in London for two years Melissa would quite like to stay there if Lance would retire. His drinking has become problematic and Melissa (who has always advised him and explained some of the more complicated deals to Lance) is having to shoulder an increasingly heavy burden and she is concerned that Lance will make some terrible faux pas that she cannot fix.

All is set for a night of heavy drinking and debauchery as the entire office is driven to an upmarket hotel for dinner and dancing.

Can I just say that this is subtitled (or whatever its called when they add a comment after the title) "The festive, feel-good rom-com" - my rule of thumb is that whatever follows the colon after the title is inevitably a lie and this rule holds true here. I did not feel good and frankly it wasn't much of a rom-com, although I'll concede it was festive. It felt like a scene from Dante's Inferno (I am exaggerating a little) with bodies writhing in every cupboard and under tables in various states of undress, there was a trick (sawing a person in half) performed by a drunk magician which could have seriously injured someone, there was so much drunkenness that a fire was started in the main room and no-one noticed, someone vandalised a very expensive car (like £10,000s of damage), cheaters were cheated upon, I think someone died of a heart attack, there was drunk driving, I could go on.

Thank goodness I only paid 99p for this.

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