'The Silver Linings Playbook' by Matthew Quick
(Picador, $34.99)
I remember many, many years ago going to the "hilarious" Peter Sellers movie Being There and crying all the way through it. Don't get me wrong, I loved the film, but I felt very sorry for Chance, the gardener, and didn't find his predicament at all what I would call funny. I had a similar reaction to The Silver Linings Playbook.
"Surprising, funny, touching, oddball, generous and packed with charm" reads the blurb on the back cover and it was indeed most of those things but not, in my opinion, funny. Happily for me, surprising, touching, oddball, generous and charming is quite enough to be getting on with.
Pat Peoples is released into his parents' custody from the Bad Place, where he has been having Apart Time from his wife Nikki. Obsessed with exercising so he can be in good shape when Apart Time is over, he spends his days working out, reading American classics and avoiding Kenny G songs. His mother is a saint, his father doesn't want to know him, his past is a little bit blurry – especially the bit involving why he ended up in the Bad Place to begin with.
Pat's mental health isn't quite what it should be. He thinks his life is a romantic-comedy being produced by God, for example. But as Pat bonds with the human race over the fortunes (or otherwise) of his beloved football team and rehearses for Dance Away Depression with the clinically depressed Tiffany, it starts to look as though maybe he'll get his happy ending after all. It's all a matter of practicing being kind instead of being right. Actually, when I see it written down, it does sound kind of funny, doesn't it?
Film rights for The Silver Linings Playbook have already been optioned but God has yet to be named as producer, although the two original producers tied to the project, Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, have both sadly died, so there is an opening.
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