Still Me
Jojo Moyes
Michael Joseph 2018 472
Pages
As the blurb on the back
cover put it, Louisa Clark knows many things. And in Jojo Moyes’ Still Me,
she’s getting to know a whole lot more - as an expatriate Englishwoman in New
York.
Much less sentimental than
previous outings Me Before You (2012) and After You (2015), this
latest installment in the adventures of much-loved character “Lou” sees her separated
from new beau Ambulance Sam by the breadth of the Atlantic. As an “agony assistant”
to Agnes Gopnik, a wealthy American’s second wife, she initially experiences a
giddy whirl of shopping, cocktails, glittering society events and so on.
But the needy Agnes, a
former physical therapist, has issues with her old money husband’s family who despise
her as an arriviste Polish gold-digger. Apart from her abundant physical
attractions, this truly awful creation is a high-maintenance, petulant, selfish
and melodramatic diva; with a genius for creating problems for everyone around
her. Two seemingly cantankerous crones, the hostile housekeeper Ilaria and the unsympathetic
neighbour Mrs DeWitt, turn out to have the true measure of her. Considering Agnes
treats Lou like a slave, causes her to lose her job and wrongly thought to be a criminal,
this irritating drama queen gets off quite lightly and escapes a well-deserved
comeuppance.
Unjustly ejected from the
Gopnik ménage, Lou finds salvation as a temporary live-in companion to the
aforementioned Mrs DeWitt who proves to have hidden depths that belie her acerbic
manner. In her briskly unsentimental get-on-with-it attitude, she even seems
more typically British than open, emotional Louisa!
The characters who really shine
in Still Me are supporting players like the Indian-origin concierge Ashok and his boisterous clan
While she isn’t always able
to avoid facile tear-jerking, Moyes keeps this voyage of self-discovery engaging
and the reader invested in her lively heroine’s progress.
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