Intimate Worlds: You've Got Mail/Love Lettering

This is Confessions of a Closet Romantic, a podcast where I celebrate my favorite romantic TV shows, movies, books and talk in detail about why I love them so much. Without embarrassment or shame! Mostly. This is Poppy and in this episode: Intimate Romantic Worlds: You've Got Mail/Love Lettering

Romantic stories create worlds I never want to leave. I'm thinking of the always-will-be fabulous rom com You've Got Mail which is based on the 1940 movie The Shop Around the Corner, which in turn is based on a 20th century Hungarian play.

Basically the story is enemies to lovers, with a slow burn internal reveal, about two shop assistants, a man and woman, who grate on each other in real life and don't realize they're falling in love as secret correspondents (in the original movie, it’s letters answering a lonely hearts ad, and then emails/IMs after they meet in a chat room).

If you haven't seen You've Got Mail, well, first of all, try to fix that right away because it's such a such a clever, romantic movie and Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan are an automatic press play for me.

It's about a woman who’s inherited a children's book shop from her late mother. Keeping the shop going is her way of honoring her memory and along with the dear, quirky staff, it’s pretty much her whole world emotionally. She dates a self-involved writer and lives a careful, predictable life… until she meets a man in a chat room online. 

Despite being involved with other people, they start an online relationship that’s extremely fulfilling for both of them– they share very few personal details so llttle does she know that he’s a rival in the book business in NYC, trying to squeeze out the competition.

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It's like instead of him being grumpy to everyone but her (love love love that trope and what it reveals about reluctant romantic feelings) he's charming with everyone, and toward her in email — except not in real life, at least in the beginning—that reversal ratchets up the tension.

And then they decide to meet.

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Since much of the action is set against this charming bookshop, the world it creates is very intimate. I mean, this bookshop —well.  For me, bookshops have always been special, revered places – a refuge and life-sized container of possibility. 

And oh the possibilities in this set up. 

The big appeal of this story for me is that close, heartfelt, private world, where true, vulnerable things are articulated. I mentioned in a recent episode that my ex-husband and I met as penpals… gee I wonder why I love this movie. 

It’s intimate and self-contained. But typical of romance plots, their worlds enlarge as they fall in love with each other. After Joe doesn’t show up for their meeting, this is what he writes to her. Oh Joe...

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Don't worry— this is the happiest of happy ever afters, cemented with a final scene accompanied by Over the Rainbow.

It reminds me of a book that I have absolutely fallen in love with, that has put a glow on ma soul. When I finished it, I had the biggest book hangover, so bad that I opened it to chapter 1 and started it all over again.

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn is one of those books that creates an intimate world of clever words and characters and observations that I never want to leave. 

It’s about a sharp but kind-hearted wedding calligrapher at a high-end Brooklyn stationery shop (oh this setting!)  She wears tights and flats and dresses with Hello Kitty faces —can’t you just picture her? 

She’s a frustrated artist and singleton who resolves to get out of the gooey and tempramental wedding business—but not before Reid, the fiancé of her last bride-to-be, comes into the shop a year later with the question she has always anticipated– and dreaded.

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Despite working in letters and words, Meg doesn't always use her words to communicate honestly about her feelings. So she hides messages in her calligraphy — Reid is the only customer who has ever cracked the code. 

He’s a Wall St. numbers genius who also struggles to express himself, introverted but in a different way. He feels he's never been ”gotten" by anyone— and neither has she.

Meg begins to reach out to him out of guilt and invites him on her art inspiration gathering trips around New York City. His left brain is turned on by her right brain free spirit and they both start to see that numbers and letters communicate all sorts of secret, intimate things to each other.

The way this plot unfolds is the best part of its charm –there’s no predicting where this couple and this story is going to go. But the tender way they navigate their emotions and  learn to be friends, then lovers is so endearing. Have you ever had a "wow I’m in love with this person!" moment like this? 

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It's a story like You've Got Mail, about seeing and being seen, about words and messages that are hidden, then become obvious to the right person, accepting that we’re all made of emotional patterns, not bold signs with clear declarations.

In both stories, when the characters finally feel safe enough with each other to be vulnerable---it’s magic.

Is there anything better in a romantic story than the forced declarations after the emotion of the fight? The whole third act of You've Got Mail is making up after the fight. 

When Meg and Reid have words, so  usual for them, Reid doesn't talk to her for a week and is so distressed and gets get so drunk one night, the bartender calls her to come get him — and then he says this.

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Kate Clayborn writes characters that remind me of JD Salinger—quirky, intellectual, poignant with layers and layers of meaning. Her latest book, Love at First, is equally beautiful.

But oh Reid. You are my new book boyfriend. I hope you find me adorable, even though I flunked remedial algebra in college. 

Me, starting Love Lettering: Oh, shutdown, uncommunicative men are so not my jam.

Me at the end of the book: Why can't this man be real?!!!!

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 Find show notes with links to what I've been babbling about at  confessionsofaclosetromantic.com 

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So nice to have your company…until next time, wishing you a world full of shame-free romance!