Funny You Should Ask

“He was my number one, heart-fluttering, palm-sweating, thigh-clenching celebrity crush. I’d entertained multiple, extensive, detailed fantasies about him. I’d done numerous searches for paparazzi pictures of him. Until this morning, a shirtless photo of him had been the lock screen of my phone.”

Chani’s reflection as she approaches Gabe for their first interview introduces the infatuation she has with him as a celebrity. Her image of Gabe will conflict with the reality she experiences, commenting on the novel’s theme of The Relationship Between Fame and Fantasy. This passage also sets up the playful tone and style of the novel.

“We stood there a moment—him shirtless and holding a puppy, me with my crush on him growing exponentially larger with every second. And me helpless to do anything about it. I felt like a teenager again, with hormones I couldn’t control.”

In terms of the romance genre, this is the meet-cute: the memorable moment when the two romantic leads first encounter one another. The puppy provides a link between the two of them, a symbol of the affection they seek and the bond they come to share. Also, in keeping with the romance genre, the element of physical attraction is emphasized.

“A lot of people think L.A. is just Hollywood. That it’s this vapid, superficial town full of vapid, superficial people, but it’s really so much more. People say there’s no culture in L.A., but we’ve got […] all kinds of culture.”

Chani defends LA as a place that is more than its image—something she will learn is also true of Gabe, whose vapid image contradicts the perceptiveness of the man himself. In the novel, LA is staged as the land of fantasy and illusion, while New York City is the epitome of the sophisticated artistic and literary scene, and Montana is pictured as rural and wholesome.

“I wanted this article to be something special, because I wanted to be something special. I wanted to be the kind of writer that could take a subpar interview and spin it into gold.”

Chani’s wish to be a good writer is her own version of wanting celebrity and fame, a small parallel to Gabe’s career, but this also marks the internal conflict that drives her character arc through the novel. She wants her talent to be visible as she believes it’s a reflection of her worth as a person.

“It’s been a year since I’ve moved back to L.A., and I keep waiting for it to feel like home again. Instead it feels like an old sweater I found in the back of my closet, one that I remember fitting perfectly, only when I put it on, it’s stiff and plasticky, permanently creased from being forgotten.”

Not feeling at home in LA after her divorce is a sign that Chani no longer fits in her old life and is ready for something new. The imagery of the sweater is an example of the novel’s occasional and unobtrusive use of figurative language.

“Everyone involved is looking to capture the same lightning in a bottle that happened the first time—when my article about Gabe made him a believable Bond and me a marketable name.”

Part of the second-chance romance trope rests on the fact that the leads have changed from the earlier relationship and the terms will be different now. This passage hints that Chani’s article benefited both of their careers, but it is also the source of her ongoing self-doubt, the shadow that lingers over her career and sense of self-worth.

“And I know, right then, that all the growing up I thought I’d done, all the walls I’d erected around my heart after six years of marriage and what since then has felt like constant heartache, are damn near useless against this.”

Jolted by seeing Gabe again during their second interview, Chani experiences a major movement along the arc of the romance narrative: She is still attached to him, and the hurt and anger she feels toward him won’t be enough to keep her from risking opening up to love again. As with Gabe, Chani’s failed marriage has made her wiser about love and more careful about who she will choose next time.

“I don’t want to like him. Not the way I liked him back then—that starry-eyed girl who had fallen head—and heart—first into what turned out to be the generic trap of celebrity. Gabe is a movie star. An actor. It’s his job to make people fall in love with him.”

As when she first met Gabe, older Chani wrestles with the realization that as a celebrity he projects a carefully cultivated image, one designed to attract. Part of her journey toward love will entail getting acquainted with the real Gabe Parker and being able to see beyond the constructed image, both the public’s view and her own projection of him, in keeping with the novel’s exploration of The Relationship Between Fame and Fantasy.

“I feel like I’m on unsteady ground. Because I don’t know how to think about that weekend. In some ways it seems so long ago; in other ways, it feels like I’ve been haunted by those days—the nights—we spent together.”

The pull of the past is a subtle but prevailing theme of the novel, especially how the past influences the present. Other examples of this theme’s expression show up in how Gabe’s choice of past roles makes people doubt his acting ability and in the questions and expectations Chani encounters due to the profile she did of Gabe in the past.

“It’s easier to be angry at Gabe for what happened ten years ago. Not just the embarrassment I felt in realizing that I’d been sucked into his magnetic pull and spit out. But I can also fault him for the way I can never tell if the success I have it due to my own skills or because of him.”

This passage establishes Chani’s key internal conflict for the present storyline of the novel: the ongoing influence of that first article on her life and the way it has made her doubt her own success. Readers wanting to know if she had sex with Gabe comes up in the fictional reviews and interviews that are scattered throughout the book, providing a public commentary on each of their lives. As Sussman’s plot progresses, Chani continues to grapple with the Definition of Success.

“I’m beyond lucky to be spending my evening listening to Oliver Matthias and Gabe Parker talk about their favorite movies and actors they idolize […] they are wearing designer suits and my dress is safety-pinned to my bra. We’re not even the same species, but tonight, they’re letting me pretend that we are.”

Excerpts from Chani’s famous profile on Gabe 10 years ago introduce each part of the novel, which is divided into days of the weekend. The Broad Sheets selections establish foreshadowing and suspense, offering a polished narrative that will be exposed as a fabrication by Chani’s narration of what really happened. This falls in line with the novel’s engagement with the way images and narratives are crafted for entertainment—something both leads do for their careers.

“I wanted to believe I knew him. Because if I did, this little moment—this evening—was more than just the article. I could convince myself that something was happening between us.”

Younger Chani wrestles with trying to determine what is fantasy about her interactions with Gabe Parker, and what is real, sincere emotion. This ability to discern reality is an ongoing theme of the novel, a challenge for both characters, and a key part of their romance.

“It’s almost like I’m coming home. Not to a place, necessarily, but to a feeling. To a possibility of more.”

The motif of Houses and Homes surfaces throughout the novel. Here, Chani’s reaction when she reaches Montana shows that she is ready for and open to a new way of being. She is away from LA, which represents the person she was, and New York City, which represents someone she tried to be. In Montana, with Gabe, she feels grounded and real.

“Even though the living room was full of people and there was music and talking and laughing, all of that seemed to mellow into a quiet kind of hush. The expression on Gabe’s face wasn’t much different from the one he’d worn when I met him on the red carpet.”

This passage plays on a common rhetorical tool of the romance narrative: allowing the leads to feel like they are in their own little sacred, separate world. The noise and confusion of the outside world don’t penetrate. Part of the romance narrative is that the developing relationship helps both characters evolve as people into who they really are.

“Time inched forward as his lips moved toward mine. I thought dimly that if I could live in this moment, in this beautiful anticipation, I would be pretty damn happy. Then Gabe’s mouth touched mine and I realized that this was far, far better than I had ever imagined it would be.”

Chani’s first kiss with Gabe brings fantasy and reality into collision. This passage captures the anticipation and excitement of attraction, a driving element of the romance narrative.

“Even though I hadn’t been drunk, I definitely had been drinking. The whisky on my breath probably hadn’t been the greatest turn-on for a recovering alcoholic.”

Though Gabe has invited Chani to Montana, her drinking signals that there are still barriers and unresolved questions between them. In the second-chance romance, both characters apply the wisdom they have learned, or are learning, to the newly remade relationship. Gabe has matured past his addictions here, and Chani has to dispense with using alcohol in the same way, as a tool of avoidance.

“There’s a lightness between me and Gabe, as if we’re slowly lifting away years and layers of anger. Disappointment.”

As her questions about their previous interactions are answered, and Gabe’s feelings become clear, Chani feels ready to move into a relationship, thus propelling the plot forward and touching on the themes of the difference between reality, illusion, and the patterns of the past.

“I think about how it felt when I came back from New York. How I expected L.A. to feel like home again, but it didn’t. How a part of me has been chasing that feeling without really knowing what I’m looking for.”

In keeping with the romance genre, Chani’s feeling of belonging with Gabe settles the longing for home that she had been feeling previously. His acceptance of her, and her acceptance of the relationship, provide the security she’s been looking for.

“Something I’ve been thinking about more and more these days. A certain type of creative torture. Teasing myself with something I can’t have.”

Chani’s wish to write fiction is, she fears, another type of fantasy, one that doesn’t belong in her real life. As she will learn, she is allowed to reshape her image, and The Definition of Success depends on how she feels about her work, not necessarily how other people feel about it.

“You wanted to know if anything happened between the two of them, and Chani here was going to give you the same bullshit line she always does about how nothing happened but everyone knows that’s a lie. Everyone knows what you did, Chani, and everyone knows it’s the only reason you have a career at all.”

When Jeremy blurts at a party that he believes the gossip about Chani, her trust in him ends and her marriage is essentially over. Jeremy, as Chani’s past relationship, is the foil to Gabe, who understands, accepts, listens to, and does not judge her. Jeremy also voices the fears Chani has about her own success, which makes her unable to be vulnerable with him.

“My career—my success—wasn’t because I was a good writer. It was because I’d latched onto Gabe like one of those suckerfish that follow sharks around, gorging themselves on their castoffs.”

In this image, Chani imagines herself as a parasite living off of Gabe’s fame and success. This is the climactic moment where she confronts her worst fears and has to make the choice as a character to grow and move beyond them or be defeated.

“I’m wobbly and nervous and not one hundred percent sure that this isn’t a terrible life-altering mistake, but I also know that this is it.”

Chani’s feelings as she is poised to have sex with Gabe for the first time reflect the kind of emotions that the romance narrative is designed to stir. This is also a climactic moment of the dramatic structure, when the two leads move through various Versions of Romantic Attachment and finally realize that their relationship is about more than sexual attraction or passionate response. For Chani, this is the moment when fantasy becomes reality—Gabe Parker in bed with her.

“I can say with all confidence that Gabe Parker is the Bond we need. He might even be the Bond we deserve.”

Chani’s confident conclusion to the early article which held so much sway, coming here near the end of the book, introduces a note of dramatic irony. Not only did Gabe’s Bond career end ignobly when he fought with his director, but Chani, in admitting she’s not familiar with the Bond franchise and therefore has no real basis for her opinion, is getting caught up in the fantasy herself.