Margin Notes: The Clasp

Side note: Before you read this review, I want to encourage you to join me on a reading challenge this year! Whether you challenge yourself to read 1 book, 2 books, 6 books, 12, 26 or 52 it's fun to have a goal and to track your reading against it. 

I know some people who challenge themselves to read a certain number of pages (so true, you can read a picture book or Anna Karenina and both count as one... but I kind of love that about my challenge :)). As an avid Goodreads user, I love their challenge and tracking tool (you can find it here). Will you join me? How many books do you plan to read in 2016?

I'm going for a healthy 52 books this year! (I read 54 in 2015 so it seems attainable). 

Now for your main attraction:

The Clasp 

by Sloane Crosley

Kezia, Nathaniel, and Victor are reunited for the extravagant wedding of a college friend. Now at the tail end of their twenties, they arrive completely absorbed in their own lives—Kezia the second-in-command to a madwoman jewelry designer in Manhattan; Nathaniel, the former literary cool kid, selling his wares in Hollywood; and the Eeyore-esque Victor, just fired from a middling search engine. They soon slip back into old roles: Victor loves Kezia. Kezia loves Nathaniel. Nathaniel loves Nathaniel.

In the midst of all this semi-merriment, Victor passes out in the mother of the groom’s bedroom. He wakes to her jovially slapping him across the face. Instead of a scolding, she offers Victor a story she’s never even told her son, about a valuable necklace that disappeared during the Nazi occupation of France.

And so a madcap adventure is set into motion, one that leads Victor, Kezia, and Nathaniel from Miami to New York and L.A. to Paris and across France, until they converge at the estate of Guy de Maupassant, author of the classic short story The Necklace.

Heartfelt, suspenseful, and told with Sloane Crosley’s inimitable spark and wit, The Clasp is a story of friends struggling to fit together now that their lives haven’t gone as planned, of how to separate the real from the fake. Such a task might be possible when it comes to precious stones, but is far more difficult to pull off with humans.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love Sloane Crosley's essays so was excited to pick this piece of fiction up. While I didn't love it quite as much as her (hilarious, witty, insightful) essays, it was a fun, if not memorable, read.

It's perfect for a beach or vacation--there's mystery, the characters aren't stereotypes, there's a bit of a peak into the lives of the wealthy, but the most interesting part of this book was the relationships. Basically, a group of college friends get together for a wedding. Victor has recently lost his job and compares himself to his friends and finds himself lacking. Kezia is working for a jewelry designer who she doesn't quite believe in, but feels trapped by. Nathanial was the golden child, playboy, who everyone thought would continue to live his charmed life, but he's not successful in LA as a script writer, though he's trying to project his usual charm and affability. Their friendships are old and solid, but they've changed since college and it's those relationships that are interesting (in my opinion, more so than the actual, somewhat predictable plot)--how do they maintain friendship post-college when they're veneers have started to crack? How to they fit together and what do they mean for each other?

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