Love and Other Puzzles
By Kimberley Allsopp
HarperCollins
Rory, or as her mother calls her Aurora, is a very unique individual that you can’t help fall in love with. After moving from Sydney, she now lives with partner Lucas, an artist who is “propped up by pillows of inherited wealth”, and works as an intern journalist at The Connect.
Her life is thoroughly organised. After her chai breakfast which has been soaking in the fridge overnight, she puts on the outfit she selected the night before after consulting the weather forecast and catches the bus to work. The same bus every morning, with a regular bus driver who asks about her absences if she has missed a day because of illness or a rare holiday.
The Connect is not a large newspaper, being a left-wing offshoot of a much larger conglomerate, and Rory is stuck with editing the classifieds and constructing the TV Week crossword. She loved crosswords and had been doing them since she was 10, but she was feeling stagnant and her time in classified seemed to have taken away her ability to form full words and complete sentences.
Rory’s one joy in life was the guaranteed sense of achievement in completing the New York Times crossword and, in a moment of madness, she wondered what would happen if she let this reliable crossword guide her life for a week. Of course she couldn’t possible follow all the crosswords answers, so she decided to consult the puzzle three times a day.
So … 7 Across … A bovine Baskin treat. Rory had to buy an ice cream at 8pm if she was not going to be stuck in the same day for the rest of her life. The crossword would make everything shift like she was on a circular track in a game of corners.
The crossword leads her to make rash decisions at work and question being in a relationship where everyone else could see how badly she was being treated. Even before the Rory’s journey got to 24 Across … Miss Frizzle took her students back in time on this … and Rory decides to stay on the bus forever, I was hooked.
Love and Other Puzzles is a delightfully original tale about life not always going perfectly to plan, and being stuck in the in the revolving sameness of a comfortable life is something a lot of us can relate to. After reading this book, you’ll definitely want to see what 16 Down … A saying that leads to opportunity … has to offer.
Lezly Herbert
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