Far-Fetched

As I've said, Not Low Maintenance is my strongest selling adult novel.  I'm very gratified.  I like the characters, I liked being with them and I still like being with them.

I got a review (!) on this book at Amazon.  It's always nice, well, it's most of the time very nice, to think someone took time to write their impressions down provided (unlike urrgg) they read the book.  This reader actually read the book, and closely.  Thank you for that.

I will readily admit I'm someone who is easily confused.  I don't make any pretense of understanding modern life or pop culture.  I understand, not for me to decide how well, my little corner.  It took a long long time to figure it out, and I give all the credit to my rabbi for giving me the tools to do so.

Ms Reader says Not Low Maintenance is far-fetched.

Excuse me?  No, really, I want to understand.  Since when have romantic comedies been reality-based?  (Does this hold true for all fiction?  Are we going to say Amanda Hocking's books about vampires are a little far-fetched?)

The filmic peak, perhaps, of romantic comedies was in the 1930's.  Preston Sturges invented the screwball comedy and everyone's been copying him ever since.  You remember Bringing Up Baby where Kate Hepburn had a pet leopard (whatever it was) and Cary Grant was trying to piece together a dinosaur skeleton?  Do you remember My Man Godfrey where William Powell was a wealthy man living at the city dump, found and rescued by Carole Lombard in a treasure hunt?  He went on to become the family butler/babysitter.

Here we have one of my favorites (because I just love Joel McCrea), Palm Beach Story.  The husband has a plan to build an airport suspended over NYC.  In order to help him achieve this goal, the wife, Claudette Colbert, leaves him to find and marry a millionaire in Palm Beach to invest in this project.

So compared to that, I thought Not Low Maintenance was quite reality-based.  Even if there was a murder by poppyseed cake.