SWC Reads: Attachments

You know when you’re reading something funny and have to stop and share it immediately so everyone can be in on the joke? Yeah, everyone gets real time updates when I read anything Rainbow Rowell. Attachments was practically a performance art piece for that very reason. There’s something gold on every page.

Centered around three characters, Beth, Jennifer, and Lincoln, who all work at the same paper in various departments, experiencing wildly different crossroads in their own lives and sharing them together…somewhat.

Beth and Jennifer’s conversations are the most accurate portrayal of modern women I think I may have ever read. They go off on tangents mid-statement before circling back to what they meant to say all along. Able to discuss their sister’s wedding, what they want out of life, and Colin Firth in period costumes without hardly taking a breath. You connect with these characters because you already know them. They’re the girls you have brunch with, the ones you work beside every day, the cousins you consider sisters, those friends from college you spend all afternoon on the phone with. That’s Beth and Jennifer. And as a reader, you get to enjoy the witty email exchanges they volley back and forth when they really should be working. Reading their emails is such a fun, unique way to get to know the characters and provides a window into their world that’s so different from the way we experience reading about other characters in the story.

Reading their emails is actually Lincoln’s job, well, sort of. As the IT security officer at the paper it’s his job to go through all the emails flagged as inappropriate. The filter is supposed to catch people who are HR risks, but it also catches all the curse words and silly comments Beth and Jennifer don’t bother to filter out of their messages to each other. Lincoln knows they’re harmless, he has no intention of turning them in. But that doesn’t stop him from occasionally reading the funny prose the women exchange on what seems to be a daily basis from opposite ends of the office.

Throughout the story we get to enjoy all three characters growing, evolving, and occasionally, truly embarrassing themselves.

Rainbow Rowell is a master in the art of making you care deeply about fictional characters and Attachments is no exception.

Enjoy!

xo,

Kate