Reliving obsession with David Cassidy

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/02/2011 (5328 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I Think I Love You

By Allison Pearson

Knopf, 338 pages, $28

ENGLISH author Allison Pearson’s new piece of chick-lit, I Think I Love You, revolves around a real-life incident and a real-life celebrity.

Like Pearson’s bestselling debut, I Don’t Know How She Does It, this latest book is mostly light, entertaining and mindless. Yet, like the earlier novel, it also offers up a few instances of genuine humour and intelligence, and a few keen observations about relationships, adulthood and dealing with the opposite sex.

The celebrity in question, as the novel’s title suggests, is 1970s pop idol and Partridge Family star David Cassidy. The true-life incident in question is the accidental death of a young fan at his 1974 concert at the White City Stadium in London, England.

Pearson’s novel begins with 38-year-old Petra clearing out her mother’s home shortly after the elder woman’s death. Petra is Welsh by birth, a music therapist by profession, and living in London with her philandering husband and teenage daughter.

Opening up an old tin box, Petra comes across an unopened letter from the Essential David Cassidy Magazine. As Petra sits down to read the letter, she begins to recall her adolescent obsession with the American pop star and the corresponding humiliations she endured at the time from her bitter, overbearing mother and her self-serving, catty girlfriends.

“You chose the kind of friends you wanted because you hoped you could be like them and not like you,” Petra remembers with regret. “To improve your image, you made yourself more stupid and less kind.”

It was while trying to fit in with these friends that Petra, then 13, sneaked away from home to join a crowd of 45,000 screaming fans at the infamous White City concert.

Like every girl there, she was sure that every song lyric that Cassidy sang was meant for her. She was equally certain that the flowery detailed replies she received to her frequent fan mail were also written by Cassidy himself.

In fact, the author of all of Cassidy’s replies, those sent to Petra and those sent to thousands like her, was Bill, a young, London-based journalist and musician deeply embarrassed to be writing for a pop star fan magazine.

Unsurprisingly, Bill and Petra’s lives collide, first at the concert, and then, as the narrative veers forward again, shortly after Petra’s discovery of the letter.

This reunion provides both characters with the opportunity to reflect on their pasts — the hurts, mistakes and the roads not taken — and also to begin to imagine a future in which they each break free from all regret and disappointment.

In finding each other, they realize that although they may be too old for pop concerts and celebrity worship, middle age is not so bad. It is, in fact, the perfect time to start over.

Sharon Chisvin is a Winnipeg writer and a former fan of the Partridge Family.