(no subject)

[skygiants]

It is very much always a good time for a new Iona Datt Sharma novella! I do hesitate to call Division Bells a rom-com, though it's got the structure of one: a shiny-eyed newcomer (and son of a peer) comes to work as the special advisor to a government minister, and immediately butts heads with a sarcastic civil servant who thinks special advisors have no place imposing their shiny eyes into professional environments that require deep commitment and subject expertise, and then they fall in love. Which is indeed a rom-com plot, and the novella is often both very funny and very romantic! But the central question of a rom-com is "will these people find meaning in each other," and while that is an important question to Division Bells, the bigger question is "will these people find meaning in themselves" -- both Jules (he of the shiny eyes) and Ari (he of the bitter exhaustion) spend most of the novel coming to grips with what the slow, grinding work of lawmaking can and can't give them, Jules fumbling his way towards a belief and passion in the work as Ari is remembering that he can have a life outside of it. It's a very good story for right now, I think; it's a story that wants you to remember that progress takes work, and also that there is hope in defeat, and also that there is absurdity in everything, no matter how serious and important, and all of these are things for which I consistently come to Iona's work.

And besides this, of course, there is the simple pleasure of rolling around in the rich detail -- it's just so much fun to read something that's so grounded in subject matter expertise, like being let in on an author's in-joke with themself. I don't personally know anything about how the business of lawmaking works in the UK but I love, so much, that Iona does! Bureaucracy romance!!!

Comments

[skygiants]

Me too! To be fair, I think most of them do, it's just a question fo where the ... load-bearing balance is?