An Emma Forrest Novel...Starring...Emma Forrest!


I think it was my friend Suzanne who recommended Emma Forrest's first novel, Namedropper, on the grounds that when I read it, I would absolutely flip out I would love it so much. She was right. I did. It was one of those novels that just absorbs you. I was completely taken in, I think, for two main reasons. The first reason is Emma Forrest herself; young, hip, beautiful, and British. The second reason is the content and her characters; Emma Forrest knew Richey Manic personally, and that's rather all you need to know.

Cherries in the Snow is Emma Forrest's third novel. If you're reading an Emma Forrest novel, you are guaranteed that your protagonist will be young, beautiful, British, hip, and Jewish. It's difficult to read into any of her novels as more than thinly disguised autobiographies, but I won't hold that against her. I feel like she is creating the best version of her life; conversations she wishes she had, clothes she wishes she had worn, one night stands she wishes had turned into proper relationships. Such an idealized and perfect version of her life could make for saccharine characters and twee situations, but Cherries in the Snow has a deeper, sadder, and more hopeless protagonist than a simply flawless version of Emma Forrest herself. There is some late-March grey slush under the snow.

Our heroine - Sadie Steinberg - is a twenty-four year old British transplant working in New York City as the person who comes up with clever names for cosmetics (truly, for me at least, an enviable job!). She is employed by her childhood friend Holly, who created the Grrl line of cosmetics to be, well, ugly. Picture bruise-purple blush, jaundice-yellow eyeshow, bile-puke-green mascara with names like Junkie, Ass-Slappin' Pink, a face powder called Heroin that Robert Smith would love. She's very good at her job, but perpetually on the hunt for the holy grail of names for Grrl, that could be for Grrl was Cherries in the Snow was for Revlon. (I have to insert here that I bought a tube of Cherries in the Snow well before I read this book, thinking that it was, of course, the definitive red lipstick. It looked positively dreadful on me, far too fuschia. I look much better in Shanghai Express by Nars. Though I remain very disappointed.)

As she is also a gal-about-town, and as this is Emma Forrest's third and most marketed novel, Sadie has the requsite romances gone wrong, and then she meets Marley. Rocking her Cherries and a very Amelie haircut, she encounters Marley in a bodega where he is buying soymilk and tells Sadie that the freckles on her arm are in the shape of his favorite constellation, Pleiades. Thankfully, she doesn't give in to such a lame, lame pickup line, and when Marley gives Sadie his number, she doesn't call. But another chance encounter (Marley is hired to create a graffiti mural in the Grrl office), leads to Sadie falling completely in love with this slim, androgynous yoga freak.

Because this is an Emma Forrest novel, Sadie has daddy issues. Namely, she talks to her father a million times a day, is completely codependent even though he lives in Britain, is convinced that she needs her daddy to take care of her, and that she'll never find another man as great as her daddy. Sadie does have a mother, but she's relegated to the fringe. So when she falls in love with Marley, Sadie is completely unprepared to fight for his attention. Her opponent? Marley's nine year old daughter Montana.

This is where Emma Forrest takes a very "grown up" turn. Instead of Sadie falling in love, wallowing in the imperfections of it all, and spending her days just feeling sorry for herself, Sadie must learn to be a grownup in a grownup relationship. In a fight to be "daddy's girl" with Marley, it's obvious that Montana must win. As precocious as Montana is (When Sadie asks if she'd like a snack, Montana replies, "I would like a plum...I would like it sliced."), she is still a nine year old child. Sadie's seething jealousy (she rips Montana's tutu when trying it on) eventually subsides, but Stepmom this is not. My favorite character in the novel was Jolene (as in Jolene, Jolene...please don't take him just because you can); Montana's wisecracking yoga empress mother. She and Sadie strike up a very genuine friendship, without the bitterness usually found between two women who have shared the same man.

Unlike most chick-lit novels, Sadie is not entirely winsome. She's erratic, despondent, selfish, and, at times, kind of gross. She doesn't have the world at her feet, and it's a bit pathetic that at the age of twenty-four she hasn't a clue about what it means to be in a real relationship; she simply wants to be coddled and told how cute she is. Emma Forrest also has great depth as a writer, her turns of phrase are decidedly gorgeous and the conceit of cosmetic naming doesn't become tiresome. Fans of Candance Bushnell and Jennifer Weiner might be turned off by the darker elements of this novel, and that is testament to Emma Forrest's beginnings as a London club kid who also happened to be a journalist. Even London club kids can't be children forever. Eventually they have to grow up, move to New York, and write novels.