Book Review/There is something about Christmas
There’s Something About Christmas
By Debbie Macomber
Mira Books
Hardcover $14.95
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
I thought Debbie Macomber, the prolific writer from Port Orchard, Wash., would have trouble topping her 2004 novel "When Christmas Comes," a hilarious story that begins in Leavenworth, Wash., a town famous for its Christmas theme, but she has done it with her 2005 book, "There’s Something About Christmas."
Like most of her stories, Debbie puts her down-to-earth characters in real towns in the Pacific Northwest, mostly in her home state of Washington. She is best known as a romance writer, but her first hardcover book in 1998 was "Can This Be Christmas?" and for the last several years she has produced books with the Christmas theme, which she says is natural because "romance and Christmas go together."
Again, "There’s Something About Christmas" is set in Washington when Emma Collins, a recent graduate of the University of Oregon school of journalism, is hired by the Puyallup, Wash. newspaper, as a cub reporter she gets to write the obituaries and spend part of her time selling ads, both chores she despises, but she desperately wants to write serious stories. That break comes when her editor assigns her to interview the three finalists in a national fruitcake baking contest.
Emma won’t admit it but she hates fruitcake and has a dislike for all the trappings of Christmas, but her biggest challenge comes when the editor arranges with Oliver Hamilton, a pilot hauling freight in his small aircraft, to let Emma accompany him to the remote locations where the fruitcake bakers live. Emma is afraid of flying.
But anything is better than writing obituaries. True to her genre, there is romance afoot in the 2005 Christmas story, but Debbie isn’t one of the bodice ripping romance writers. The love story is so subtle it is not obtrusive to the fast paced story Debbie tells using dialog so effectively, the reader could well be eavesdropping on the conversations the characters are having.
The author is a master at conflict and resolution. Her situations are slice of life realism done in a humorous mode. There is one scene in which Emma is flying with Oliver when she begins to squirm in her seat next to the pilot. He inquires and she tells him she has to use the facilities. He calmly hands her a pickle jar and she explains the female anatomy precludes her using that means.
The interviews with her subjects about fruitcakes are highly believable and the life conclusions she draws from those interviews are insightful in the maturing Emma.
Interestingly, the book prints the recipes of each of the contestants Emma interviews, including on that is a chocolate fruitcake and in an interview, Debbie assures readers the recipes are authentic.
"In the world of fruitcake, most people either love it or hate it," she said. She admits she loves it. Several of the chapter headings in the book contain actual quotes from famous people about their love/hate relationship with fruitcake.
Debbie Macomber describes herself as a storyteller, but admits her writing talents came did not come easily. She says she was dyslexic and therefore one of the most original "creative spellers." She began writing on a rented typewriter in her kitchen and would bargain with her four children to give her quiet time to write.
It has been 18 years since she sold her first story and in that time Debbie Macomber’s name has become a household word. She has more than 60 million books in print and says she is "perennially on deadline," yet she finds time to mentor to young people and prisoners and raises funds for battered women’s shelters and for literacy and medical research.
As a story teller she says she collects yarns that will one day be worked into one of her books. She says she does not spend time description, but concentrates on telling the story.
She said in an interview: "There are better writers in this world, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone more passionate about stories than I am."
Christmas is one of her favorite holidays, she says, thus the Christmas theme novels that seem to be a tradition from Debbie Macomber’s pen. She is already working on the 2006 Christmas novel, called "Christmas Letters," about a woman who earns extra money for the holidays by writing Christmas letters. If it is true to the 2004 and 2005 Christmas stories, it will be ladened with humor, a technic, Debbie Macomber says is her trademark.
(Bill Duncan is editor of The Senior Times. He also writes a column each Thursday on the Opinion Page of The News-Review in Roseburg, Oregon. His blog is www.theduncansonline.com/elderstatesman)