Attachments

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

RAINBOW Rowell's debut novel, from 2011, is a fall read in the same way that Nora Ephron films and Gilmore Girls are fall watches: pure cosy autumnal rom-com vibes.

Newsroom friends and colleagues Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder love to email each other about everything at work. Lincoln O'Neill, the Omaha Courier's Internet security officer, loves reading their work emails... and soon finds himself falling in love with Beth.

A good chunk of the novel is set in the autumn of 1999, and is largely composed of Beth and Jennifer's email correspondence. In one message to Jennifer, Beth rhapsodizes about October, her favourite month: "There's a chill in the air that lifts my heart and makes my hair stand on end. Every moment feels meant for me. In October, I'm the star of my own movie — I hear the soundtrack in my head (right now, it's Suite: Judy Blue Eyes) — and I have faith in my own rising action. I was born in February, but I come alive in October."

"I'm a nut," Jennifer writes back.

"A hazelnut. A filbert," Beth responds. "October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!"

Beth clearly has a bosom buddy in Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables, who was similarly rapturous about the 10th month of the year, breathlessly telling nonsense Marilla: "I am so glad to live in a world with Octobers."

— Jen Zoratti