So, I'm not going to type this into word and paste into the window. This is raw, no cursory proof-reading (I always suck at that anyway) and probably the worst way I could do this. I'm going to create a list of topics now to try and stay in some form of coherence throughout. So the themes that I noticed in Billy and Me?
1-Rural England is idyllic.
2-Only people who read classics can have an opinion on anything relating to them.
3-The way to a celebrity's heart is through cake and insults.
4-You can stay in the same town for 26 years for fear of change, then move in with your celebrity boyfriend after a mere few months of dating.
5-Social anxiety problems are never problems when there are photo ops.
6-Your celebrity boyfriend must become your life. You are allowed to resent him for this.
7-It's okay to have goals in life, unless they no longer suit your partner, in which case, they've changed. Change is Bad.
8-Cancer is a good way of removing superfluous characters.
9-The protagonist is always right.
I wish I could make it to ten. Sad times. So the above is a really hazy way of encompassing all those niggly little things within the storyline of Billy and Me that sent me over the edge. That's not including grammar fails, excessive ellipses and unnecessary exclamation marks.
Now, the first point may seem unfair. Rural England can be beautiful, and peaceful, and fulfilling to the soul. But in Billy and Me, it seems to be stuck in the dark ages, and used as a contrast to Sophie's experiences in London. So much of the events connected to London - Billy's stage show and film role, Heidi and Coco, the cast from the stage show dominating Billy's time, hell even the old lady at the bar in the awards show after party - it's all shown in a negative light. It's almost as if she's saying that Billy is being corrupted in the big city, and needs the ease of life in Rural England. It's not just subtext, it was one of the worries that Sophie voices in the narration leading up to her leaving home.
But I think it's unfair. A lot of the negativity associated with London was in Sophie's head. What happened in Kent when she was there? a) her father died. b) she and her mother stagnated in their depressive states for approximately 15 years. c) she found out her alleged best friend had cancer. d)she got papped there. Twice. Compared to the one time in London. e) her best friend died. I don't know about you, but to me, Kent seemed worse than London in this story. This is one of the many reasons I found Sophie to be an unreliable narrator.
The second point really annoyed me, the way Sophie felt about books and movie adaptations. She's like a lot of people you find in life, who's so obstinate about the fact her opinion is valid that she can't see the alternating perspectives. Schoolgirls - not schoolboys - ruin the classics from the library by leaving them in their bags. Do we really need another adaptation of Pride and Prejudice? No one understands P&P as well as Sophie, so of course she's the best choice for Billy to run lines with. But when she opens her teashop she's well within her rights to put her favourite books out for customers to read. You can be sure she encouraged people to read and then told them they were wrong when they gave an opinion about Jude, or Emma, or Lydia, or Heathcliff, unless they agreed wholeheartedly with Sophie.
This actually leads through to Billy's chosen roles. He repeatedly stated that he wanted to grow beyond a typecast, and go for difficult, gritty, intense roles. That's how he even got involved with Pride and Prejudice in the first place, though I still have trouble picturing happy-go-lucky Billy as proud, stalwart Darcy. So he went for a gritty stage play, and Sophie had nothing but negative comments hidden as positive reinforcements to say. I know that seems like an oxymoron, but encouraging him not to read reviews in case someone said something mean? Ignorance isn't the way forward. He went for the film, he spent forever prepping her about the context and subtext and expectation and yet she still played high and mighty over the scene she saw. I still cannot get over that scene of her sitting *as I pictured reading* ramrod straight and haughty in the chair while he grovelled on the floor. Her ignorance and stubbornness changed a guy who would throw his head back laughing, not a care in the world, into someone weak and broken on the floor. You know who does that? Abusers. Sorry, but she must have mentally abused him in some way to have him react like that, with those scenes proceeding. It is sick.
Which brings me neatly onto point three, because their first scenes were of her inept flirting and his cheesy chat-up lines. He was kind and warm despite her opening her foot and inserting mouth. Oh, I'm sure Giovanna meant it to come off as Sophie being socially awkward, with all her anxiety issues, but now I look back, it seems like the first moments of abuse, where he was still Billy and she put him down, insulted him every chance he got. The grovelling seemed out of character at the time, but in retrospect? Guys, we have read an abusive love story FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE ABUSER. I'm not over-dramatising this, all the excuses and behaviours are there, hiding in plain sight. How did this go unnoticed? Why aren't more people unsettled by this story? Come on, she even tries to separate him from his friends, he's already isolated from his family. She wants it just him and her and gets jealous if even his boss threatens that, and goes into histrionics if anyone tries to compromise her whims. She leaves her work after assaulting a customer and then guilts Billy over her actions, despite the face she should be contrite over committing an actual crime, and getting the fuck away with it.
It feels like an epiphany I'm having. Sophie May, the girl-next-door, abused Billy Burkin, the film star. Shit. And looking back at the list? It encompasses so much of that. So many of those points are triggers. When she was moping in her room after leaving him, she might as well have signed her note that she was going to kill herself to manipulate the fuck out of him further (I'm not being blasé about suicide, far from it, but that is a form of manipulation common with abusive partners, that mindset of 'if I can't have you, no one can' to ensure their commitment). No wonder he looked so gaunt on that final TV show.
The only part of the list that doesn't seem to be under the abuse-umbrella, that I haven't covered so far? Molly's cancer, which made me feel just as angry. She got sick awfully quickly and didn't have any treatment? She died the same chapter the notion was fully introduced? No. Do you know what unsettled me most about Molly's cancer story? It fit into the pattern of my illness, of Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura. First time you get it, there's a slow burn of maybe a month. You'll be angry, irritable, beyond tired. You may bruise or get that pin-prick rash. And then one day it all builds to a head and you collapse, becoming a true medical emergency, where if you're not treated within days of collapse you're dead. Breast cancer (what Molly had) is more of a slow burn. It's lazy writing at it's best, just chopping Molly out to give Sophie exactly what she wants with minimal effort. It smacks of lack of research and wish-fulfillment. Why did Molly not get a lumpectomy with radiotherapy and chemotherapy? She would have had a 30% survival rate, which is better odds than I got given. Is there some hidden message that the NHS sucks, or Molly needed Sophie to survive? I honestly don't know at this point.
All I do know, is that I'm so disappointed. I went into this book with excitement, I'd been anticipating it for months. I was hoping for a light frolic, with a good narration from someone who had experience in her chosen topic. I was disappointed when it seemed it would be little better than the most generic of fan fiction. I was nauseated when I realised how awful Sophie truly was. In retrospect, maybe it's not so surprising that she both knows Dorothy Koomson and took her writing advice, since Dorothy Koomson has touched on topics like widowers who have no idea their former wives were prostitutes pimped out by his father, and fifteen year old girls manipulated by paedophilic teachers and accused of murdering him. The biggest difference is that Dorothy writes with a clarity about the baseness of her subject matter and pulls no punches about it being dark and horrific, whereas this book is sold as idyllic romance.
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