Adam Sharp is going through a bit of a mid life crisis - he just doesn't know it. On the face of it, life is good. He has a long term partner, a job as an IT consultant and a passion for music and pub quizzes. So far so good.
Maybe more When I'm 64" than Light My Fire but Adam is okay with that. Or rather, not fed up enough to do anything about it. Until an email arrives out of the blue, from a woman he loved and left more than 20 years before.
"Hi" is all it says, but it is enough to send Adam down the rabbit hole of ifs, buts and maybes. He recalls meeting Angelina when she walks into the pub where he is playing piano and singing. Both in their early 20's, he is in Australia for work, she is an actress in a soap opera. They fall for each other, but, like many a great love song, it wasn't to be. She is married (unhappily), his stay is temporary. They part. He returns to England and meets Claire. Two decades later and the fizz has gone out of their relationship. Then the email arrives.
The Best of Adam Sharp is a novel of two halves, both book-ended by Adam's enduring feelings for Angelina. When his relationship with Claire appears to be over, he accepts Angelina's invitation to join her and her husband for a week at their holiday home in France.
Ex-lovers, a husband, what could possibly go wrong? A lot, as it happens. Adam realises Angelina is the one that got away - but how does she feel? And what about her husband? What is his story? This is where the book lost me.
Curious to see an ex-lover I get, how they look, wanting to know how their lives have turned out, wondering if there is still a spark. But throw in a game-playing husband who doesn't mind his wife's first love sharing their home for a week, well, this is where it didn't ring true for me.
The themes of lost love, regret, infidelity, settling, turn-a-different-corner-and-we-never-would-have-met - coulda, woulda, shoulda - are all here. But for me, they are explored in a way that didn't fully add up.
The book throws up many complex and poignant questions and as such, should have felt substantial. In my view, it didn't quite get there. I didn't attach to any of the main characters and despite references to some of the greatest pop songs ever written - this device I loved - it left me feeling a bit 'meh'. More middle of the road than thunderstruck.
Avril Hoare
