3 out of 4 stars
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Randy Love ... At Your Service by Shay Carter offers up a slice of British life through the wandering eye of a young man living moment to moment—never thinking too deeply about anything, and with not one committed bone in his body.
Randy Love makes his way through life one small step, forwards or backwards (or sideways), at a time. He joins a temping agency, performing odd jobs to earn money while at university, and later on picks up a full time job working the counter at a building society with oddball colleagues, before heading off to London, choosing finance as his profession.
Through it all he dodges older women and picks up countless young women (sometimes younger than he realises). In a couple of more telling instances, he vaguely wonders if he can ‘turn’ a lesbian, and unsuccessfully schemes to be awake and in the sitting room to catch the show of a cute flatmate’s early morning stretch routine. This is a man who some women seem to chase, and yet when he is giving chase, women don’t trouble to slow down.
We watch over Randy’s shoulder as his misadventures, with women and work and not always of his own doing, get him into trouble time and again. His father looks upon his foibles with a fond amusement while his brother and sister, successful in law and construction and a couple of decades older, give out advice, cash and a place to stay at the moments when Randy finds himself in such need.
He is a proud if dim character, not too rounded out, but this may be a statement on a certain kind of young man by the author—well-educated, a little bit spoiled, never taught to question himself. When one is in their early twenties it’s normal (but not the case every time) for one to be impetuous, to want the end result before putting the work in, to procrastinate, and to make all the wrong choices when it comes to love and romance. This is all a learning curve! And with a strong voice for a rather one-dimensional character, the author makes this insight into young adult life in our day and age often through the novel.
This is not a novel of high stakes, though this raises a tad after Randy has moved to London and started working for a bank. He realises that he loses so much money from leaving flats without notice, therein forfeiting deposits, his reasons for leaving either fear of eviction (having been an appalling tenant), or a landlady being too frisky for his liking. Furthermore, it takes screwing up his first serious relationship to realise what a vital connection it was for him. None of this is gripping or revealing, if that’s what you’re looking for in a novel. Again, no high stakes here, simply following a young man’s missteps and letting the reader laugh at his foolhardiness, maybe nostalgically, perhaps sympathetically.
The author has a great talent for pacing a light set of plot-lines and characters. The gem of the book is the humour, and if a lot of the British slang goes over your head there is a clever index at the end of the book listing the meaning of such slang. A lot of Randy’s story is made up of small moments, including when he’s alone, being purely himself, and these are as much fun as the ridiculous screw-ups. For example, practising his salsa steps when he hears someone walking into the room, jumping onto the couch and staring hard at the back of a Natasha Bedingfield CD. A dorky moment doubling as a touch of humour and a way to make a self-centred and one-dimensional character a bit more human.
It’s in the latter half of the novel that the author rounds Randy out somewhat, slowly until he becomes infuriating, a big difference from the charming and happy-go-lucky boy at the beginning. He is lazy, blames the world around him; he claims everybody in the flat pulls their weight while they stand around him, rolling their eyes, their scorn unnoticed by oblivious Randy. He lacks a degree of self-analysis which apparently must come a bit later in life, after he loses something important and which he did not value before. This is a fair reflection on youth if still a clichéd one. By making this observation in a character who, to be fair, lost his mother at a young age, albeit is never shown to contemplate this, the author’s intent with such a reflection is dubious.
The best I can say is that the author uses an older character, his father’s friend Michael Goddard, a successful tax advisor and life coach of sorts to Randy, to bestow a bit of wisdom, urging the importance of the girl he does not appreciate, of education, of being up to date every day with the world because nothing ever stays the same—to be thoughtful and always aware. Through a man who says he’s seen and done all that Randy’s seen and done so far, and offers the wisdom of hindsight and life learning, the message is clear. Youth is the time for stumbling and getting back up, and progress means learning from it all, not simply circling the drain, as Randy does maddeningly for so much of the book.
There’s not much to dislike about this novel. I think anybody looking for something light and a good laugh (and isn’t turned off by foul language or depictions of sex) will find this a fun book to get into. I rate it 3 out of 4 stars. I think the author has a strong voice and feel for storytelling, when not being repetitive or formulaic (this could be reduced simply by cutting a couple of weaker chapters about Randy doing what he always does: screwing up) but would like to see a deeper development of character. That is what stops me giving this fun novel 4 stars.
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Randy Love...at your service
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