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What to do when you’ve just graduated from college and your plans conflict with those of your parents? That is, when your plans to hang out on the couch, re-read your favorite children’s books, and take old prescription tranquilizers, conflict with your parents plans that you, well, get a job?
Without a fallback plan, Eshter Kohler decides she has no choice but to take the job her mother has lined up for her: babysitting for their neighbors, the Browns.
It’s a tricky job, though. Six months earlier, the Browns’ youngest child died. Still, as Esther finds herself falling in love with their surviving daughter May, and distracted by a confusing romance with one of her friends, she doesn’t notice quite how tricky the job is … until she finds herself assuming the role of confidante to May’s mother Amy, and partner in crime to Amy’s husband Nate. Trapped in conflicting roles doomed to collide, Esther is forced to come up with a better idea of who she really is.
Both hilarious and heartbreaking, The Fallback Plan is a beautifully written and moving story of what we must leave behind, and what we manage to hold on to, as we navigate the treacherous terrain between youth and adulthood.
This little book grew on me SO hard. Honestly, I found the beginning to be all kinds of jumpy and disjointed and ugh. But I plowed through largely because I didn’t have anything else to read, and man, am I glad that I did.
Esther is witty and dry and funny and she’s got a bit of a sass that, as I hope you know by now, we fancy ladies definitely appreciate. She is far from perfect, though, as evidenced by . . . well, let’s look at the object of affection: Jack is a Tool, plain and simple. (Yes, I capitalized the ‘t’ — it’s deserved.) He’s such an asshole that I don’t want to spend any more time talking about him. And then she goes and has a little fling-a-ling with Nate, the (married) father of her babysitting charge, May. She wriggles out of that one fairly quickly, though, which I’d say is largely due to her love for May.
May. What a fantastic little girl. The fantastic little girl who causes Esther to kind of snap the eff out of it and man up. Not only is Esther witty and dry and funny and sassy, but she’s also got a bit of cop-on and a good head on her shoulders. In her relationship with Amy, May’s mother, Esther is the adult. And it’s in this role reversal that we see Esther trying to bridge the gap between who she was when she left home and who she is now that she’s returned.
I feel like I should mention the thinly veiled little Narnia action going on throughout the story. It’s not too distracting, once you get past the bit about the talking panda and can pick up on some of the parallels between that story and the “real” one. Not much to say about it other than the fact that it’s there and it maybe was unnecessary, but I didn’t mind it too much.
The Fallback Plan is kind of an anthem for many college grads, especially as of late. They do a good (alright, even a halfway decent) job in school, graduate college, and then . . . well. Certainly not an abundance of jobs, in a chosen field or otherwise. In a boatlad of debt, unable to start fresh, many of them return to the same place that they left years ago. It’s the burden of a generation: they did everything they were told and some even excelled in it all. What’s the reward? Catching up with the deadbeats (*cough*JACK*cough), wiling away the days, hoping to be in the right place at the right time for something interesting to happen to them.
I’ll tell you a secret. I kind of don’t like giving stars, especially for books like these. Because is it “worth” 3 stars or 3.5 stars or 4 stars . . . blahdunno. What I do know is that I’ll recommend this book to anyone, especially if they’re in an in-between kinda place. It won’t disappoint.
