Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? [antikvár]

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? is probably Carroll's most ambitious novel to date (and she does like to be `out there' with her plots - a re-telling of Cinderella last year, the year before that the girl died and went to heaven but had the chance of coming back, she's had psychics in her novels...) and it asks the question of can love survive long distance. Can a couple who have been together since they were teenagers survive as Annie finds herself in New York and having all her dreams come true as she stars in a Broadway play whilst Dan has to stay home in Stickens in Ireland because that's where the couple live. That's where his family are. His vet's practice. It's like a seven-year-itch novel but without the annoying name of it being a seven-year-itch novel. It's not necessarily that Dan and Annie have fallen out of love with each other, they just don't know how to be around each other. Annie feels frozen out and alone in Stickens, with a mad mother-in-law and a never-ending circle of visiting neighbours to boot while Dan is always rushing around like a man possessed to be Ireland's Greatest Ever Vet heck he's probably going for Ireland's Greatest Ever Person as he can't say no to anybody; except Annie. I love me some long distance love affairs. I loved the idea of Annie and Dan hitting the pause button on their relationship and meeting a year later at Rockefeller center in New York where they got engaged. I think mainly I loved the romance of it all; I love the idea of two people who love each other seeing if the grass is really greener or if it just appears to be greener. Mind you, Annie's life in Stickens was miserable. I thought Carroll set up Annie's exit from Ireland beautifully because I could feel how stifled she was with everybody being on top of her and Dan constantly disappointing her. It radiated out of the book. Her need to escape was tangible. I found myself willing her to get the job, willing her to tell everyone where to stick themselves. I wanted Annie to burst out and yell at everyone to leave. her. alone. I wanted to smack Dan for not being there, for being absent. I thought the first half of the book was really fast-paced, despite Annie's slow-going life. I found myself caught up in it all as Annie desperately hopes to get the Broadway gig. I wanted to see Annie in her natural habitat, which was her being an actress, being on stage, not feeling like an extra in her own life and I thoroughly enjoyed the New York section of the novel.