The Rocks

Starred review from March 30, 2015
Nichols (Voyage to the North Star) has conjured the perfect beach read: a romantic story set in a rich beach town on Mallorca called Cala Marsopa. Though you may not get sand between its easy-to-turn pages, you’ll feel as though you have. Lulu Davenport, a lithe and headstrong beauty, is the doyenne of Villa Los Roques, a resort dubbed The Rocks by the English expatriate layabouts who return annually each summer. The book opens in 2005, in Lulu’s “ninth decade,” when a surprise encounter with her estranged first husband, Gerald Rutledge, awakens “a flame of old anger.” Gerald gave up his sailing life and made a permanent home in Cala Marsopa following their brief marriage, though they have managed to avoid each other almost completely for nearly 60 years. Nichols crafts the story in reverse, moving back through time and revealing that even though these former lovers have had little contact, they have left deep imprints on each other. Meanwhile, another story of love, separation, and the “horrible, stunting gap between dream and desire and practicality” is revealed through the deeply intertwined lives of Lulu’s and Gerald’s respective children: Luc Franklin, the son of an American father and raised in Paris, himself a summer-only resident of The Rocks, and Aegina, the dark-eyed daughter of Gerald and a local. The two central stories engage the readers’ sympathies and emotions, while Nichols colors in the background with the indelible imagery of the wind-swept Mediterranean, and the louche exploits of the careless adults and the tanned teenagers who can slip effortlessly from English to Spanish to French, but have a harder time growing up beyond the endless summer.

Starred review from March 15, 2015
The lives and loves of expatriates on Mallorca, shaped by a 60-year-old misunderstanding. Nichols' novel opens in 2005 with a chance meeting between Lulu Davenport and Gerald Rutledge on a cliff-top road near The Rocks, Lulu's seaside hotel. Though they live in the same small town on an island, the couple has managed to avoid each other since their very brief marriage in the 1940s, and this encounter immediately becomes a confrontation. In its course, the pair of 80-somethings accidentally tumble to their deaths. The remaining sections of the novel-set in 1995, 1983, 1970, 1966, 1956, 1951, and 1948-trace backward through the ripple effects of their falling-out to the incident that started it all, sweeping into the vortex their children by other spouses, and the generation after that as well. As intoxicating as a long afternoon sitting at the bar at The Rocks, the book features complications that include a book deal, a real estate swindle, a shipwreck, a drug bust, and many sexual affairs, including a couple of statutory rapes. All of it is absolutely riveting, leaving the reader desperate to depart immediately for swoony Mallorca, depicted from the time no one knew where it was (one would-be visitor goes to Monaco by mistake) to its present-day popularity. Nichols' expertise on everything from the Odyssey to olive oil to classic movies enriches the story, as does his profound understanding of his screwed-up cast of characters. "They were self-employed professionals, artists, writers, nonviolent sweet-natured criminals, mysteriously self-supporting or genteelly impoverished, ....occasionally sleeping with one another in a manner that disturbed no one. In unspoken ways, they recognized one another, and everything they did made perfect sense to them, though they often arrived on the island as pariahs of the outside world, but were soothed and taken in by their steady, tolerant, and nonjudgmental friends and lovers on Mallorca." A literary island vacation with a worldly, wonderfully salacious storyteller.

April 15, 2015

Nichols's (Voyage to the North Star) tale begins in 2005, at Lulu's 80th birthday party. With her long white hair, the lithe, beautiful proprietress of Villa Los Roques still appears robust, although a recent stroke has affected her brain. By chance, she encounters Gerald, her ex-husband, whom for years she has managed to avoid despite both being residents of the small island of Mallorca. They exchange words; they scuffle; they plunge off a cliff and drown. What a stunning start to this novel, which proceeds, section by section, to go back in time, examining their doomed love story and the equally dismal relationship between her son, Luc, and Gerald's daughter, Aegina. The problem is that Lulu is mostly unlikable. She has very little use for her son, she carries grudges, she is uncommunicative. Although she comes across to her guests as Meryl Streep's character in Mamma Mia!, there's something disturbed about Lulu. VERDICT Although there are similarities, this title is not Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins, and readers hoping for another winsome, humorous, hopeful love story will be disappointed. Nichols has written more of a tragedy, with the only glimmer of light coming in the final pages. However, the lovely Mallorca backdrop may be enough to satisfy some.--Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2015
Set chiefly on Mallorca, this languorous novel begins in 2005 with a freak accident that kills British octogenarians Lulu Davenport and Gerald Rutledge. The story then travels in reverse all the way back to 1948, when Lulu and Gerald were briefly married. Following their split, the staunchly self-reliant Lulu buys and presides for more than 50 years over a hotel called Villa los Roquesthe Rocks. Gerald, meanwhile, uses the proceeds from his book, which recounts his navigation of Odysseus' route, to buy a small farm where he ekes out a living manufacturing olive oil. The travels of Odysseus are a recurring motif, and the novel's pages are liberally salted with references to Homer and The Odyssey. In later marriages, Lulu has a son, Luc, and Gerald has a daughter, Aegina; these two bob in and out of each other's lives. As the book voyages deeper into the past, each section adds another layer, until readers finally learn what caused Lulu and Gerald's rift. The proceedings are enriched by a sharply drawn cast of secondary players. Nichols deftly melds comedy and compassion, and his rendering of his Mediterranean setting will have readers packing their bags. Recommend this to readers who enjoy the novels of Jane Gardam.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)