Miss Ambar Regrets

John Cleary

Harper Collins

Otago Daily Times , January 15th 2005

John Cleary’s latest offering is described as “a classic love story set against a world in turmoil.”  Do not fear, gentle reader, this  is an unfairly florid assessment of a rather sweet, and easy-to-digest morsel.  It tells the story of two not so star crossed lovers-TV news reporter Jack Shakespeare and the eponymous Adele Ambar, a wannabe actress who refuses to realise her only theatrical talent is being drop-dead gorgeous.  Her pursuit of fame and recognition takes her first to New York, then London, while Jack (who has no intention of leaving his own, comfortable, career) waits for her to come to her senses and return to Sydney.  The world turmoil is certainly there (they are in New York on September 11th, Jack becomes Channel 15’s correspondent in Afghanistan), as are personal dramas.  However the novel is saved from torrid melodrama and saccharin poisoning by Jack.  Describing events after the fact, his wry and knowing descriptions and a hint of journalistic detachment give his narrative an enjoyable lightness and humour.  Take their first love making for example; “Don’t hang around waiting for a sweaty description of the next hour.  In my second year at university I read an old novel by Evelyn Waugh.  In it he reduced a seduction to its bare essentials, a one-lone paragraph: that night I took formal possession of her.  I remember I fell out of bed laughing…ever since then I’ve been unable to read erotic passages without wondering how old Evelyn would have rendered them”

Cleary is more Jane Austen lite than Charlotte Brönte, but Miss Ambar Regrets is certainly good summer beach fare. Enjoy.