I had not heard of Andy Jones, but when I spotted his novel ‘The trouble with Henry and Zoe’ in a church book sale, a year or so ago, I liked the look of the front cover and the blurb on the back sounded interesting. So I paid my 50 cents and it sat on my ‘to-be-read’ shelf until I picked it up to read about a week ago.
The story is, unsurprisingly, about a young man called Henry and a young woman called Zoe. We meet Henry first, wondering whether it’s worse to marry the wrong girl, or to jilt her the night before the wedding. We don’t learn immediately what he decides to do, but it’s fairly obvious he is going to prove himself a coward - since he didn’t express any doubts until this moment - and a jerk who wouldn’t even talk to his potential bride, deciding instead to cut and run…
And we meet Zoe, who’s also wondering whether she’s in the right relationship, but she’s not married. She is, however, living with the very attentive Alex. He’s been acting a bit suspiciously recently, and she’s wondering if it’s time to call a halt… but it’s a bit tricky, since they share the ownership (and mortgage) of a house.
Then something unexpected and traumatic happens, to change the course of Zoe’s life. I could feel some rapport with her, and certainly some sympathy - and horror - when things go wrong, although she is quite remarkably casual about intimate relationships in general, rather crude at times in her conversation.
I didn’t take to Henry at all, at least not at first. And when I was just half a dozen or so chapters into the book I wondered if I was going to finish it, or abandon it pretty soon and return it to the next book sale. I’m glad, now, that I decided to keep going for a while as I did find myself liking both main characters more, particularly when (as is inevitable) they meet. I wasn’t expecting the circumstances, but it works very well, and quite a nice friendship starts to emerge.
Zoe, by this stage, has decided she’s going to take a year travelling - exploring the world, trying to find out who she really is. She realises she’s been dependent on people most of her life, and she wants to do something significant by herself. She makes this clear to Henry right from the start, but she doesn’t tell him why, or what events have led up to her decision.
Henry also decides to keep quiet about his past, and, indeed, his second occupation. There’s less excuse for him, I feel; but it’s an odd relationship, based on attraction and friendship but with a lot of secrets that become harder and harder to introduce into the conversation.
Both Henry and Zoe feel quite three-dimensional by about half way through the story, even if their friends are shallow and caricatured. Zoe has two close friends and I never could remember which was which;; but it doesn’t much matter. The conversations mostly seem realistic and towards the end I found the events quite engaging, wondering what was going to happen, when the secrets would emerge, and how it would all end.
I was a bit disappointed that the ending turns out to be somewhat inconclusive, even though there’s a brief epilogue - and also that, although the cover implies a light-hearted, even amusing story, it’s actually quite serious with some difficult issues covered. There are some nice, lighter touches - games of Scrabble, for instance, and large jigsaw puzzles - and it’s not a heavy read, but it should probably come with trigger warnings rather than the very lightweight cover implying something frivolous.
I don’t suppose I’ll read this again, so it may well end up back at the next book sale; nor do I plan on looking out for anything else by this author. But if you come across it, and don’t mind a bit of bad language and some very casual relationships (though, thankfully, no intimate details) it’s not a bad read. It’s in the women’s fiction genre despite having been written by a man, and I thought he handled it well on the whole.
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