Farewell, Oliver and Lucien
I gave it a lot of thought; reading the London Calling series was an amazing experience in itself, one I will do anything to live again. For a long time, I contemplated how I should present my thoughts on this book: a review? A literary essay? An appreciation post? But what felt the most appropriate was a farewell letter to these two characters that felt like home every night I turned on my Audible. I laughed, sobbed, internally screamed, blushed, and most of all, felt comforted by this absolutely messy story with so much heart and relatability. It feels only adequate to let them go with a heartfelt letter...you know...for verisimilitude.
Dear Lucien and Oliver,
When I first started this series, or rather your story, I came in with zero expectations...a book I picked because I wasn't in the mood to read, listened to because it was available for free on YouTube and stuck with as it didn't require much effort. Who would have thought that a book picked out of pure nonchalance would give me so much comfort? I still remember the first five chapters of your story felt like something completely outside my usual taste, but I didn't give up, for which I am so glad. This story is filled with British humour, slang, posh vocabulary and just enough self-deprecation that it won't let you DNF it.
While reading Boyfriend Material, I expected cliché after cliché because that is what happens when a story claims to be an enemy-to-lovers romance novel, but boy, was I wrong. Not that it had none, but it handled them in a way that felt straight out of a plausible real-life scenario. Unlike other romcoms that I have come across, where the mundanity of a highly unrealistic yet mildly feasible situation is unnecessarily heightened by over-the-top commentary of every stare and touch (not that I don't enjoy it), it's the ordinariness of this book, the self-awareness of its ridiculousness, that makes this read almost too realistically real. So, it began to knock every prediction of mine right out of the park and continued to do so until the very end of this series.
Every romance book often gives an idealised template for a relationship, but I don't think that's what this story was looking for, or what these characters are meant for. Lucien and Oliver were outrageously uncommunicative about their feelings, messy about their actions and hasty about their opinions...Lucien was whingey, and Oliver was, for lack of a better word, presumptuous. Two people that different would never seem like a good pair on paper, but they worked, for they were willing to work at this relationship. This willingness to stick it out and self-awareness of their flaws served as a perfect foundation for this relationship. They found each other at their worst and made each other better.
But love is never enough to sustain a relationship, is it? That's where this series sets itself apart from other romances because it shows the after, the struggle, the insecurities, and the difference between falling in love and staying in love. Lucien and Oliver's elopement (ironically) from their own wedding in Husband Material challenges the idea that what comes after love doesn't necessarily need to be dictated by socially prescribed conventions, no matter how right those conventions feel to everyone. Two people can love each other, embrace each other's flaws and build a relationship but still not want marriage to make it legitimate, and that's just another apt side of a relationship. What comes after love is not necessarily a wedding always; it's commitment, and commitment looks different for all...for some it's a marriage, and for some it's the intimate awareness of companionship.
And when the script of this relationship is flipped again, enter Father Material. This is no longer a story of romantic love, but it has become a story about building a family. This natural evolution of a relationship into a bigger and more complicated— a family—prompted them into uncharted territory that feels just as frightening as it feels right. And because they are Lucien and Oliver, obviously they don't directly take huge steps; instead, they go for baby steps. Extension of a family through any addition is daunting, and adopting a dog is just enough practice that makes them realise the gravity of what they want and the reality of their preparedness, but nothing is conventional when it comes to them, so how can parenthood be? Having a foster teenager with her own traumas and separation guilt, Jaz obviously felt manageable in the moment to these two, and the plot thickens.
Jaz is not merely a catalyst of their relationship; she is not just a hurdle that they overcome together. She is the core of their relationship, a mirror to Lucien's and Oliver's own childhoods and, at the same time, someone who becomes a character in her own right. Separated from her mother, she has become accustomed to people disappointing her and leaving her, so she uses inevitable separation as a defence mechanism to protect herself from hurt, which reminds me of one of Lucien's lines in Boyfriend Material: "It's just easier to push people away than watch them leave". But Oliver and Lucien's commitment towards each other and their willingness to embrace what life throws at them makes them the kind of guardians Jaz needs to believe in people again, and perhaps in the system too.
This particular arc is one of my favourites of theirs because it's not just about their own struggles with feelings but their desperate reluctance to project their own childhood ordeal on this child, specifically Oliver's, who particularly had a strained relationship with his parents. Then the question arises: how exactly parenthood looks with Lucien, whose father walked out on him when he was three and his prior relationship that took away whatever self-esteem he had left with someone like Oliver, whose parents, in wanting to make him proper, created a man so uptight that even care and love became synonyms for clear boundaries and discipline? Two entirely different approaches to upbringing and two absolute lovebirds- how do they find common ground? This is a beautiful culmination for these two characters, as they encounter not only their own prejudices and inherited ideas but also the strains they can impose on their relationship. And it's done with just as much sincerity and just enough maturity that you expect from these two characters (which is not a lot).
Throughout this series, we follow two absolutely opposite people, entangled by circumstance, who learn and unlearn what life is supposed to be. It's not scary and scrutinising all the time; it's not a courtroom where one has to be wrong for the other to be right. Instead, they learn to discover and create new conventions of their relationship on their own terms. And at the end, despite all that goes in an unwanted direction, they still find each other at the end, holding out their hands to pace each other, not because it's a codependent relationship but because they want to, as Oliver perfectly puts it.
But perhaps it's not their love or relationship that draws me most. It's not even their unconventional choices or their constant Olivering and Luciening each other...I think it's how human they are, how relatable their progression and fears feel. Each disagreement, each apology, each action of endearment and each reluctant yet necessary acceptance of each other's opinions makes their story so deeply human that every mundane conversation provides assurance that these two will survive no matter what. And that reassurance makes it easy to leave them be in this unknown beyond the pages, because we have known them enough to realise this story has a happily ever after, no matter how complicated and scary that after is for them, with them.
Every romance book often gives an idealised template for a relationship, but I don't think that's what this story was looking for, or what these characters are meant for. Lucien and Oliver were outrageously uncommunicative about their feelings, messy about their actions and hasty about their opinions...Lucien was whingey, and Oliver was, for lack of a better word, presumptuous. Two people that different would never seem like a good pair on paper, but they worked, for they were willing to work at this relationship. This willingness to stick it out and self-awareness of their flaws served as a perfect foundation for this relationship. They found each other at their worst and made each other better.
But love is never enough to sustain a relationship, is it? That's where this series sets itself apart from other romances because it shows the after, the struggle, the insecurities, and the difference between falling in love and staying in love. Lucien and Oliver's elopement (ironically) from their own wedding in Husband Material challenges the idea that what comes after love doesn't necessarily need to be dictated by socially prescribed conventions, no matter how right those conventions feel to everyone. Two people can love each other, embrace each other's flaws and build a relationship but still not want marriage to make it legitimate, and that's just another apt side of a relationship. What comes after love is not necessarily a wedding always; it's commitment, and commitment looks different for all...for some it's a marriage, and for some it's the intimate awareness of companionship.
And when the script of this relationship is flipped again, enter Father Material. This is no longer a story of romantic love, but it has become a story about building a family. This natural evolution of a relationship into a bigger and more complicated— a family—prompted them into uncharted territory that feels just as frightening as it feels right. And because they are Lucien and Oliver, obviously they don't directly take huge steps; instead, they go for baby steps. Extension of a family through any addition is daunting, and adopting a dog is just enough practice that makes them realise the gravity of what they want and the reality of their preparedness, but nothing is conventional when it comes to them, so how can parenthood be? Having a foster teenager with her own traumas and separation guilt, Jaz obviously felt manageable in the moment to these two, and the plot thickens.
Jaz is not merely a catalyst of their relationship; she is not just a hurdle that they overcome together. She is the core of their relationship, a mirror to Lucien's and Oliver's own childhoods and, at the same time, someone who becomes a character in her own right. Separated from her mother, she has become accustomed to people disappointing her and leaving her, so she uses inevitable separation as a defence mechanism to protect herself from hurt, which reminds me of one of Lucien's lines in Boyfriend Material: "It's just easier to push people away than watch them leave". But Oliver and Lucien's commitment towards each other and their willingness to embrace what life throws at them makes them the kind of guardians Jaz needs to believe in people again, and perhaps in the system too.
This particular arc is one of my favourites of theirs because it's not just about their own struggles with feelings but their desperate reluctance to project their own childhood ordeal on this child, specifically Oliver's, who particularly had a strained relationship with his parents. Then the question arises: how exactly parenthood looks with Lucien, whose father walked out on him when he was three and his prior relationship that took away whatever self-esteem he had left with someone like Oliver, whose parents, in wanting to make him proper, created a man so uptight that even care and love became synonyms for clear boundaries and discipline? Two entirely different approaches to upbringing and two absolute lovebirds- how do they find common ground? This is a beautiful culmination for these two characters, as they encounter not only their own prejudices and inherited ideas but also the strains they can impose on their relationship. And it's done with just as much sincerity and just enough maturity that you expect from these two characters (which is not a lot).
Throughout this series, we follow two absolutely opposite people, entangled by circumstance, who learn and unlearn what life is supposed to be. It's not scary and scrutinising all the time; it's not a courtroom where one has to be wrong for the other to be right. Instead, they learn to discover and create new conventions of their relationship on their own terms. And at the end, despite all that goes in an unwanted direction, they still find each other at the end, holding out their hands to pace each other, not because it's a codependent relationship but because they want to, as Oliver perfectly puts it.
But perhaps it's not their love or relationship that draws me most. It's not even their unconventional choices or their constant Olivering and Luciening each other...I think it's how human they are, how relatable their progression and fears feel. Each disagreement, each apology, each action of endearment and each reluctant yet necessary acceptance of each other's opinions makes their story so deeply human that every mundane conversation provides assurance that these two will survive no matter what. And that reassurance makes it easy to leave them be in this unknown beyond the pages, because we have known them enough to realise this story has a happily ever after, no matter how complicated and scary that after is for them, with them.
Comments
Post a Comment