A very young girl, yearning to escape her provincial beginnings, is swept up into an ill-advised romance with a much older, more sophisticated, totally inappropriate man who educates her in sex and heartbreak.
You know how this story ends, right?
Happily, Australian author Cory Taylor rescues this worn-out tale from itself with Martha, the "me" of Me and Mr. Booker. Sixteen years old and trapped in a fatally dull town, Martha is a teenaged old soul who recounts her doomed affair with Mr. Booker in a sardonic, clear voice. "Everything I'm about to tell you happened because I was waiting for it," she begins. "This was a while ago, when I decided that a girl is just a woman with no experience."
Martha is drawn into a dangerous triangle with Mr. Booker and his wife after meeting them at one of her lonely mother's many parties. The childless couple, recently arrived from England, "adopt" Martha, buying her gifts and taking her out for boozy lunches. Martha is captivated by the glamorous Bookers, and responds immediately when Mr. Booker initiates an affair. He is stylish and seductive, a man whose slippery charm and drinking habit would send red flags waving for an older woman. But Martha, desperately bored and eager for the rest of her life to start, finds him exciting and worldly.
As expected, there are seedy motel rooms and broken promises and spiraling consequences. Martha falls in love with Mr. Booker, but never learns much about him; he speaks in cynical, hackneyed phrases--"as if everything was a game because he had decided to make it one"-- and drinks constantly, both habits designed to veil his superficiality and narcissism.
Of course, those qualities of Mr. Booker are quite clear to the reader and (one hopes) eventually to Martha. Though she is smart and sharply perceptive about the many floundering adults around her--the dysfunctional Bookers, her estranged father, her disappointed mother and her ragtag broken friends--her naivety about the affair is a recurring surprise, a reminder of how young she truly is.
Me and Mr. Booker is a slightly misleading title; this book isn't really about the story whose plot you will recognize instantly. It's about Martha, who, in her determination not to become like the stagnantly disappointed adults in her life, embarks on another rite you may find familiar: the probably painful, perhaps misguided, and definitely enlightening rush to grow up. --Hannah Calkins
Shelf Talker: Australian author Cory Taylor's debut novel is a fresh take on an old story: a young girl, an older man and a sticky, doomed love triangle.