A Novel Love Story

“If this was a romance novel, we’d kiss. That’s what always happens—the gumptious heroine meets her match in the first chapter. A meet-cute. Something memorable. Remarkable. […] My story wasn’t that interesting, anyway. A three-star read at best. I could imagine the trade reviews—Though she tackles the mundanity of her life with aplomb, nothing happens to Eileen Merriweather. Angst-ridden backstory told in deeply regrettable prose. An utterly skippable read.”

Elsy thinks this shortly after meeting Anders and being alone with him at the bookstore. It shows her encyclopedic knowledge of the romance genre as she ironically plots out exactly what would happen next. Yet this also shows Elsy’s self-deprecating nature, as she describes her life as a book that she wouldn’t read herself.

“It was a year I’d rather not remember. Mom said that everyone had them, when your entire world is upended and you can’t seem to get your footing again. Except, I never found my footing again, and I’d been stumbling ever since.”

Here, Elsy is referring to the year Liam ended their engagement and Rachel Flowers died shortly after, dashing her hopes of a happy ending to the Quixotic Falls saga. Her confession that she has been stumbling since shows how her breakup with Liam was only the catalyst for a series of bad feelings. Though she knows that other people experience this, Elsy sees how she is unable to shake the bad habits of her relationship with Liam and the aftermath of their engagement.

“Because for Prudence, things always worked out. She was the main character, and I was happy just being along for the ride. It was safe that way. Easy. Her heart never led her wrong—not once. I wished I could say the same about my own.”

Elsy frequently refers to herself and others as either secondary characters or main characters, continuing to blur the lines of fiction and reality. Here, she is contrasting herself with Pru but mentions that she is content to play her life safely. This version of Elsy provides a strong contrast to her character at the end of the novel, who has learned The Importance of Taking Chances and isn’t afraid to stand up for herself and her wants.

“‘I wonder if Rachel meant it this way. I wonder if Ruby’s happy.’ […] ‘The worst thing that can happen here is a burnt hamburger and a rainy afternoon. How can she not be?’”

This exchange between Elsy and Anders occurs when she sees that one of her favorite characters doesn’t appear to be living the life she wanted. It shows Elsy’s inquisitive attitude toward Eloraton contrasted against Anders’s pessimistic fixation on keeping the town the same. This also reveals part of the reason why Anders stays in Eloraton so long; the worst things he has to deal with here are trivial compared to his real-world struggles.

“So who could blame me for sinking into books, where I knew the people weren’t real, but they also never disappointed me? I knew everything would work out in the end. I knew happy endings were destined, ever afters fated, and no matter what trials and tribulations and, well, surprise fuckups happened, things would end up okay. I just needed a story—or maybe a few hundred stories of happily ever after—to escape mine.”

This quote highlights Elsy’s interest in escaping her own life after her breakup with Liam. It references the major theme of The Positive Impacts of Fictional Stories as well, showing how romance novels helped Elsy survive her toughest times.

“You don’t realize how much of life is built for relationships until, newly single, you find yourself with a broken ankle, cooped up on the couch in your one-bedroom apartment, and you need to go to the restroom. The problem is, you’ve knocked your crutches over and the pain prevents you from moving too much at all. You go through the Rolodex in your head of whom you can call, and every one of them has someone more important than you in their lives to take care of.”

Elsy often considers the wants and needs of others before thinking of herself, as evidenced by this quote. This trait is what leads to the troubles in her relationship with Liam. This also shows how Elsy is afraid to ask for help, something that is echoed in the rift between her and Pru.

“I argued, often, that once a book was done, once it was written and published and sent out into the world, it was no longer yours. It turned into ours—together. You, telling the story, and us, interpreting it. So, I knew that this Junie wasn’t my Junie—not the one I had imagined in my head.”

This quote adds to the commentary that Poston makes about fiction throughout the novel. Elsy only fully grasps the fact that she is in Eloraton when she sees that the characters and settings are not exactly as she thought they would be, yet this belief helps her reconcile to that fact. The novel often discusses the subjectivity of fiction, something that is especially echoed through the symbolism of the starlings.

“I should’ve seen the signs, but for years I was just…contented…following Liam down hiking trails, and curling my fingers around the back of his shirt like a child as we swam through concerts, and letting him lead us wherever he wanted to go. I should’ve realized that he never looked back to see if I was still there. His gaze was always trained ahead, and that’s what I’d loved about him, but in the end it turned out that I simply wasn’t important enough for him to look back at. Not even once.”

This excerpt succinctly summarizes Elsy’s relationship with Liam and why it went on for so long. Ironically, while Elsy claims that Liam never looked back at her, she continues to metaphorically look back throughout the novel, having her gaze trained toward her past rather than her future.

“My life was still moving, and deciding to still go was the first real decision I’d made for myself in…In years.”

Elsy says this about her decision to go on the book club retreat on her own. After her breakup, she continued the habit of not making decisions about her life, so her choice to go to the cabin in New York is especially significant and shows her life moving forward.

“If I was the nosy type, I’d figure out who Rachel dreamed up for him. I bet it was someone who was a foil, an opposite who drew out all the best and worst parts of him. So, basically an optimist who loved books and shook him out of his grumpy shell and had some sort of character flaw that was both a little endearing and very much annoying to him.”

Elsy wonders this about Anders after she becomes convinced that he is the protagonist of the final book in the series, waiting for his heroine. Ironically, though Elsy knows all the tropes of the romance genre, because she doesn’t know that she is in Poston’s novel, she doesn’t see how she is describing herself here. This quote points to the many layers of fiction and reality in A Novel Love Story and how Elsy is continually caught between them.

“Recently, I realized, in my effort to be fine, to be good, to be absolutely copacetic, I wished I had told my best friend how I really felt about the cabin week being canceled. How I felt about feeling left behind, and the world spinning on without me. It was silly, because in hindsight I knew she’d understand. When it came down to it, though I adored Liam, in an effort to be right for him, I hadn’t let him in. Just like I hadn’t let Pru in, either.”

In this moment, Elsy recognizes how her relationship with Liam rubbed off on her relationship with Pru. Unlike Liam, Pru wants to know what Elsy is feeling, yet she still hides it from her best friend so as not to be a bother. This continues to show how Elsy puts others first before herself, even when she knows she shouldn’t.

“It was refreshing, and nice, and sweet—to be given something so I didn’t have to want it in the first place.”

Elsy says this about Anders, indirectly comparing him to Liam. This is also how Elsy treats others, though she rarely thinks to do so for herself. Elsy is experiencing an important transition in her Life After Loss. While she has put her life on hold as she mourns and copes with her breakup, she has found positivity and is beginning to move forward again.

“It is bad to not know the ending. I mean, what if she’s not around tomorrow?”

Junie says this to Maya when they are discussing Maya’s fears about telling Lyssa she loves her. Though this is meant for Maya, this quote affects Elsy greatly, as she is also debating whether or not to pursue a romantic relationship that could be troublesome. However, it also refers to a recurring motif about happy endings and Elsy’s fixation on them, causing her to rethink her approach to giving everyone in town a happy ending.

“It was so foreign to me, because I could barely recall the color of my desk in my office, or the color of pen I used to mark up essays. My head was full of useless things—the books I read, characters’ favorite colors, lines that felt lyrical and significant and slid off my tongue like honey. […] They were things that were selfish and insular. I cared for words with a reverence I rarely shared with anyone—how could you share them, anyway, when words were imagined things?”

This quote highlights the major theme of The Positive Impacts of Fictional Stories by showing just how important literature is to Elsy. However, throughout the novel, Elsy often refers to reading as a communal yet solitary experience, as it is in her book club. This returns to the idea that literature can be something finite as well as something subjective.

“I won’t fault you if you stay, is what I’m saying. Follow your heart. Even if it leads you wrong, will you really regret it?”

Junie tells this to Elsy when she considers staying in Eloraton, echoing her earlier response to Maya. This quote leads Elsy to really consider what is important to her in life. As she thinks back about her bad experiences, she recognizes that she doesn’t regret them, which leads her to begin understanding The Importance of Taking Chances.

“If this was a book, I’d know the information I’d need to sew this story together. I’d know the hints Rachel Flowers dropped. I’d see the foreshadowing. I’d predict the ending, and see it through. […] But this…this felt like being in the middle of a story, between one sentence and the next, not sure where to go.”

This quote emphasizes the many layers of fiction and reality in the novel. Here, Elsy is in a unique position as a reader, a character, and an author who is able to shape the plot without knowing how to do so. Her uncertainty about her role emphasizes her uncertainty about her role in life and what she should do next.

“I just stopped. My wedding dress is still hanging up in my closet, my wedding shoes in their box. I just froze everything. I put it on ice. Me included […] Maybe that’s why I read romance novels so often, because they’re pretty stories clearly shelved in fiction, and that’s where I wanted to be. And then I came here, to a fictional town, and […] I wanted to stay in a world where the plots are predictable and the endings are happy. Somewhere just as frozen as I am.”

Elsy tells this to Anders when she recounts her relationship with Liam. While Elsy tried to escape reality by reading after her breakup, she does so more literally when she arrives in Eloraton and questions if she wants to stay. This also shows her hesitance toward uncertainty, as she would prefer to be somewhere that is predictable and that she knows well.

“Everything was just the way she had left it. It was perfect, still, in its own little garden. Then I’d come, and I ruined it while thinking that I was helping, and the worst part was—I understood. Because my wedding dress was still hanging in its bag in my closet, my wedding shoes in their box […] so everything would stay exactly the way it was, exactly the way Liam left it—when I was still happy.”

Elsy thinks this after she discovers Anders’s true identity. Though she finds comparisons between herself and Anders throughout the novel, here Elsy realizes that they are both frozen in place and dealing with Life After Loss. However different they seem, the fatal flaws of both characters are essentially the same.

“I was afraid that if this story was finished, that would be it—there would be no more stories, and no more Rachel—but I was wrong about that, too. Because her stories live on in you, and your friends, and everyone else who reads her work. She’s gone, and she’s not. She’s dead, and she’ll never die, and that is the part about stories that I’d forgotten. And you helped me remember. Perhaps this ending isn’t what Rachel had in mind, but I don’t regret it.”

Anders says this to Elsy, summarizing another one of Poston’s commentaries about The Positive Impacts of Fictional Stories. Here, Anders finally recognizes that there are ways in which Rachel continues to live through her stories, however different they might be to others. This again highlights the finite yet subjective nature of literature while also showing how much of a role it plays in both characters’ lives.

“I wouldn’t fault Anders for wanting to stay for so long. In another life, I’m sure I could’ve written myself into Eloraton and become that quirky English professor who lived in the loft of an independent bookstore, searching for her great American novel. I didn’t have to be anyone else. Defined by few adjectives and a name, padding other people’s stories so they didn’t feel so empty. It would have been a good life. But I wanted a little more.”

Here, Elsy continues the motif of referring to herself and others as kinds of characters in stories. Anders has become a background character in the world of Quixotic Falls, making sure that he is as unobtrusive as possible. Yet, by this point in the novel, Elsy is starting to realize that she wants to be the main character in her own story, which she can only do by unfreezing her life and taking a chance on herself.

“Because even after the people were gone, there were still stories. There were always stories. Other people took the heart of her books, and kept them close, and nurtured them and grew into something new, because nothing could ever stay in stasis. Nothing ever stopped. Nothing was permanent. Art lived and breathed, like love, like friendship. Life—like works of art—was transformative. It persisted. And through them, so did we.”

This quote echoes Anders’s views about Rachel’s stories living on through others, also highlighting another of Poston’s points regarding The Positive Impacts of Fictional Stories. However, this also shows what Elsy has learned about the life she considered frozen. Though she thought she stood still while all her friends moved forward, here she recognizes that nothing will stop moving forward, so she must as well.

“And I braced myself for my heart to break—But it didn’t. Maybe I was stronger than I gave myself credit for. Or, maybe, whatever I was leaving was worth it, because ahead of me was Pru, and the book club, and my story. Whether or not tonight had a happy ending, I wouldn’t be around to find out. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe, in some stories, the ending didn’t matter as much as the journey. It was a romance, after all. They all had happy endings eventually.”

Elsy says this as she leaves Eloraton for the real world. This quote shows just how much Elsy has grown and how she has learned to move on from the past, appreciating the journey rather than only focusing on the destination. The final two sentences of this excerpt also foreshadow Elsy’s own happy ending, despite it not seeming plausible at this exact point in the novel.

“Love was a bunch of small things that added up to bigger things. Love was feeling valued. And accepted. Just the way you were. It was never feeling too much, or not enough, even though often you were both, because Love loved you anyway. Not in spite of it, but because of it.”

This quote emphasizes another lesson that Elsy learns in Eloraton and through the characters of Quixotic Falls. Though she had read about them in their novels, Elsy’s firsthand encounters with the love stories and relationships she cared about in Rachel’s novels teach her that love comes in many forms and that, like literature, it can look different to everyone.