Salutations, fair bookworms, and welcome to our 18th book review!

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Now that we are more than a little halfway into the year, it feels right to stop and reflect at far we’ve come with up to 17 months of books – a heck of a stack, my friends – and that is no mean feat for a self-confessed slow reader and book repeater (sometimes you just can’t beat an old favourite). But variety is the spice of life and the last lot of books that have come into mine have been a true delight.

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This month’s pick is no different with the latest novel from the fabulously witty Jessica Dettmann. Firm fans will not be disappointed, and new readers are in for a treat with the jubilant and heartfelt Your Friend and Mine.

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Margot, a once passionate foodie and now seasoned (had to do it) restaurateur in her 40s, is knocked out of routine by a message from beyond the grave – via a solicitor – from her friend Tess who died 20 years ago. The request is simple if a little bizarre: an all expenses paid (within reason) holiday in London, Tess’s birthplace, to fulfill her friend’s final wishes as instructed in a series of letters. Margot takes the plunge but doesn’t quite get what she bargained for as each task brings a surprising revelation about the person she thought she knew and raises questions over the major life choices Margot has made.

 

I’ll take a messy poltergeist any day of the week over this kind of judgmental haunting.

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Thankfully, Margot isn’t braving this adventure alone, with Tess’s stepbrother Leo (a suspected spy masquerading in a ‘boring’ job) enlisted to help as an emotional comrade-in-arms. I have to admire the sheer pluck of Tess wielding this kind of power over people she only knew until their early 20s, I can barely get an RSVP for brunch. Her larger-than-life personality comes through clearly in her letters as well as Margo’s flashbacks when they became close friends while working together. You never forget the girl who upends a tray of drinks for you on some gross creep.

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From putting up with atrocious family members to staging a Viking funeral in bone-soaking rain and mud-larking in the Thames (definitely not something I knew existed), Your Friend and Mine is laced with black comedy and absurd moments that can only happen in a fish-out-of-water scenario and make for much lighter moments in the book. Margot’s dry cynicism and Leo’s put upon nature contrast against Tess’s slightly reckless outlandishness and make for an amusing dynamic. The darker elements and tragedy of Tess dying so young are written with sensitivity and Tess’s friendship and character aren’t over-sentimentalized for the sake of the plot. She’s recognizable as the spiky over-confident friend who can sometimes come across as more insulting than well meaning (a fire sign, for sure), and who we ultimately empathise with as more of her backstory is revealed.

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While never having met previously, Margot and Leo gradually bond through their shared connection with Tess and, at the risk of sounding trite, it’s a touching affirmation of how we’re shaped by the people we love and the lasting impact they have on us after they’re gone.  

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The bittersweet nostalgia, warmth and charm of Your Friend and Mine make this a compelling read and Jessica Dettmann knows how to balance the full gamut of emotion with humour and grace.

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The best book to share amongst friends, I give it five out of five Michelin stars.

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And if that doesn’t tempt you to give this book a crack, maybe the far more eloquent words of a professional critic will:

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‘Your Friend and Mine is Dettmann’s fourth adult fiction and, like its predecessors – works relished by fervent admirers but criminally unknown elsewhere – it’s a novel that manages to keep a laugh-per-page quotient hovering somewhere between that of Toni Jordan and P.G. Wodehouse, while embedding that humour in stories that speak to the lived reality of women’s experience... a call to adventure Dettmann renders with trademark charm, black humour, and a neat grasp of human foible. The voice of Margot is one of the novel’s chief pleasures. She’s a narrator after Helen Garner’s own heart: sardonic yet self-effacing observant to a fault. Dettmann’s prose is generous, however, even when her observational acuity is of Lorrie Moore or Anne Tyler-degree sharpness because she notices things democratically. Her wit can be arch and sometimes anarchic, too, in true Nancy Mitford style. Yet the author never allows her humour to become a kind of cool, aristocratic affectation. She always manages, as Irwin Edwin said of Dorothy Parker, to combine a heartbreak with her wisecracks. There is always a sense of humour begging larger questions. What do we owe to those we love? And what remains after they’ve gone?’

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Geordie Williamson, The Australian

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