Nothing to See Here
By: Kevin Wilson / Narrated By: Marin Ireland
Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
Yeh yeh yeh—ya see the ending a mile off… oh but that final TWIST! Yessss!!!
My sister, the Birthday Girl, picked this for our little audiobook club, and it was a delight and a hit all around. Huzzah, we all shouted, and then my mom added, “But I saw the end coming. From the first, I knew what was going to happen.”
And yessss, one sees our sad sack heroine, Lillian, sees the emptiness of her life, her dumb job, her self-loathing, finds out about her awful hometown and her awful mother, and yesssss, if we don’t KNOW what’s going to happen? Well, then we at the verrrrry least HOPE what will happen cuz that young woman needs a break in her life!
Enter the, uhm, break?
Lillian’s old boarding school chum, Madison, has gotten in touch with her: Won’t you please drop everything and be a “governess” for my two DESperately unwanted stepchildren? Just for the summer?
Lillian looks around at her pathetic life and, even tho’ there’s a pretty unfortunate history between the two women, she’s off like a SHOT! Sorta… after all, she’s Once Bitten, Twice Shy with Madison. And going to Madison also brings up where Lillian’s Life SHOULD be right now… had not that unfortunate event occurred.
The catch? Those two dear children have this kinda sorta “condition” whereby? Uhm, yep, they burst into flames at desperately inopportune moments. And as their dearest papa is a politician who’s in the running for Secretary of State and is being vetted means that EVERY minute is an inopportune one. But as the twins’ mom has just died, and as Madison has her own child, there’s pretty much nowhere for the twins to go. And after all, Madison knows Lillian can keep a secret. It is why, for instance, Lillian’s life has ended up so shitty whilst Madison’s has come up roses.
At first I thought I was going to have a problem with Marin Ireland as narrator. I’m not unfamiliar with her work, and previous association with audiobooks such as Beartown by Fredrik Backman had me thinking her voice was going to be far too brittle. After all, I felt I gave Ms. Ireland “a pass” on Beartown given that every single character in that book was either a jaded man or a traumatized woman. How on EARTH would she manage different types of characters here?
Turns out, comPLETEly perfectly. Lillian is sooooo sarcastic, filled with soooo much self-loathing and angsty chutzpah, and the twins are soooo cynical, so very raw, that Ireland’s voice really captured them and turned them into living, breathing, wonderful characters. The twins aren’t the only ones who smolder and catch fire as Lillian finds herself trying to navigate her own way through this new world of hers. There are landmines galore in the story! Plus, Ms. Ireland even manages a bit of a Southern drawl for Madison, nothing overdone, no stereotype or caricature, just Madison being Madison. I was wrong; Ireland was the perfect choice for this story.
A lovely story of the families we make, of how we all get knocked down but not many of us choose to get back up again. Lillian is a character to die for, and Kevin Wilson just seemed to be enjoying the heck outta himself as he wrote this with its absurd happenings (Stunt gel to keep things to just a smolder?), and its sometimes coarse language (And if you find the F bomb to be too much, Yes, You Are A Prude…)! This was such a marvelous book, and I didn’t feel cheated by the end. It was a bit abrupt, as tho’ Wilson might be toying with a sequel, but I doubt he is. Rather, it felt just like Life itself. Big happenings are usually followed by baby steps and We Just Dunno What. You do big things, and then?
You just breeeeathe into the next phase of your hard won Life.
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