Lovers and Friends

"Friends and Lovers" is an epic soap opera about the relationship David Watson, the brilliant American playwright, and Sarah Cope, the dazzling English actress. Part of the fun as you read this "novel of reckless passion and devastating love" (remember, cover blurbs are never written by the author) is trying to decide if David and Sarah are more Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe or Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh (I lean more towards the later). Told by their friend Nikki, the story spans from David and Sarah's first meeting in June 1970 to the publication of a trashy biography in October 1987, three years after the deaths of the Waltons. Revealing the fate of the couple is not giving away anything, for it is clear from the opening chapter as Nikki comments on the lurid biography that the reader is aware the Waltons are star-crossed lovers. Marchetta is a Hollywood insider, who worked on both "Dallas" and "Dynasty," so she has a sense of soap opera on the grand scale and it is the details about Hollywood that elevates "Lovers and Friends" above most trashy novels that we love to read in summer. Her narrator, Nikki, bears the burden of loving David and Sarah throughout the highs and lows of their intense relationship, and she is as interested in trying to explain why it was so great and why it went so horribly wrong as she is in preserving the accurate details of the entire affair. Of course, in the end we care more about the narrator than we do the two main characters, and their death is painful because of all the relationships that are left unresolved and incomplete. Nikki is devastated because she has been too close for too long. Expect neither lessons nor lectures on morality or human relationships with this book. Just go along for the ride and enjoy all the mud that comes with the soap.

This is not a romance, this is not like any other fiction, this is not an ordinary book. The easy with which Lovers and Friends introduces and depicts the characters, the flowing quality of the narrative are so real that it is surreal. One never for a moment doubts the existence of people such as Nikki, David, Sarah et al in reality. Although this was a story of high-profile individuals, their experiences do not escape the reality of life. The friendships are warm and keeps well above melodrama; the love is deep, sensual, and never idealic; the problems are human, profound and touching. As the story progresses we watch people change and mature, grow old and die as we do each day in our own lives. There is something we can identify with in each character -- none are too happy, too evil, or too perfect. And the cornerstone of this book -- the desire for happiness, is explored from many different angles -- marriage, children, career, self-awareness, confidence, sex. Imperfections of reality brings a remarkable liveliness to this story. The ending is a gut-wrenching tragedy, yet it has no superficiality whatsoever. We find the inevitability of fate when the pursuit of happiness becomes also the cause of despair, heartbreak, and worst of all, the loss of someone we love. If one takes away no superfluous satisfaction from an unhappy ending, one takes away an inspired need to re-examine our own lives. This is no romance, this is not like any other fiction, this is a story of living, dying, loving, hating, giving, taking, feeling, hurting and all that we do to ourselves and each other. This is life.