The Typewriter Girl

When I first picked up Allison Atlee's The Typewriter Girl, I was so excited to read it. The book seemed like the perfect trifecta of noveldom. A pretty pastel washed cover featuring Victorian era clothing and the open ocean, a sassy lower class English girl overcoming class differences to find love and the author was a Bread Loaf grad! Always one to support my fellow Bread Loafers, I bought the book, brought it home and made my way very, very slowly through it. New job, exhausting hours, it was just hard to stay awake and read once I snuggled into bed. I am sad this was my reading process for this book, for I think that is perhaps the reason The Typewriter Girl really didn’t do it for me. When I first picked up Alison Atlee’s

            When I say didn’t do it for me, I mean that the book never really seemed to click in place. The protagonist’s actions seemed hurried and disjointed, each portion of the story stretching out over too long a time or not enough time at all. The more I read, the more I felt that I was being presented with stock characters instead of new people to meet and enjoy. Elisabeth Dobson, our heroine, is a strong lower class English girl who has found herself in one too many sticky situations and now sees her job at a seaside entertainment resort her last chance. She has modern ideas about sexuality that are refreshing for the time, but otherwise her sensibilities don’t set her apart from the rest of the Eliza Doolittle types in literature. Elisabeth’s object of affection is Mr. Jones, a Welsh engineer who is even more of a stereotype than Elisabeth. Jones has pulled himself up by his bootstraps, overcome class differences and the snobbery of the aristocracy to make his way in life and we never get to forget that. The love story that develops between Elisabeth and Mr. Jones moves quickly and predictably, with only a few surprises thrown in to keep things interesting. I was sad that I figured out the ending far before the final pages.

            Timing and plot aside, Atlee has provided quite the cast of characters to keep the reader entertained, if not to actually aid the plot along. We get the rough and tumble workers of the seaside town, the savvy hoteliers who employ Elisabeth, the kind family who she lives with and the aristocracy who are painted broadly as out of touch, shallow and rather conniving. I found myself more intrigued by some of the secondary characters than by our protagonist.

            Atlee does have a wonderful sense of how to create a scene. Perhaps if one looks at the novel as a set of scenes instead of a tightly flowing plot things will work out better for them. There are moments when Atlee perfectly states what being in love is like, or how it feels to lose a child or the hidden sides to all conversations and interactions. The scenery is treated nicely, not overdone but used to add to the particular scene being tackled.

            I fear I am beginning to ramble and write with the same disjointed feeling the novel gave me. Again, I’ll state that part of that feeling came from reading over too fragmented a length of time. For a first novel, I give Atlee credit for not being afraid to take chances, even if they end up falling into the realms of predictable or awkward. Overall she has presented a story that aims to charm and entertain and I will grudgingly admit she has achieved that. Give The Typewriter Girl a chance; let Elisabeth try to charm you and Mr. Jones seduce you. Who knows, they might just succeed.