Double Ex: A Romantic Comedy about Lost Love & Lookalikes
By Lee Daniel Bullen. Available here.
Good news! I spent my week off reading a longer book this time! I actually pecked at this for the last week before my break as well, I don’t know why it took me so horribly long.
We start with a man (Nick) hopelessly obsessed with his ex. To the point that he makes a habit out of screwing girls that look like her. That ex (Sofia) is dating a new man, a rich art collector who has a habit of cheating on her (Josh). On one of these occasions, he happens to choose a woman who is doing much the same thing as our first man, seeking out those that look like her ex (Lucy).
Nick happens to bump into Josh and Lucy at a pub. Josh gets nasty. Nick breaks his nose. Josh throws an epic temper tantrum that lasts many chapters and involves enlisting his right hand man, Samoan Sam (who is actually Maori), in a fair amount of criminal activity.
Lucy and Nick end up chasing lookalikes at the same bar that night, and Nick puzzles out that they’re there for the same reason. Nick’s wet-blanket roommate Konrad is along as well, and though he expresses derision for their habits, he ends up chasing after a lookalike of his own ex for a brief period afterwards. Eventually, Nick and Lucy make an attempt at serving as each other’s wing-person, but the pair of lookalikes they go out with end up getting together with each other.
Lucy’s sister Amanda happens to be a lawyer, and gives Nick some advice on the pending trial for his scuffle with Josh. Samoan Sam broke Konrad’s arm while Konrad was home alone and drunk one night.
Nick loves to go talk to his mother’s headstone. His family were all hippies, and his father is living in a cave somewhere. Somewhere where Lucy has to travel for her work as some sort of booking agent, and she suggests he and Konrad come along to celebrate his birthday. Konrad begins reading the in-flight magazine out of boredom and some twisted sense of spite, but becomes fascinated with the pop star Corsica Coleman.
At this music festival is where Konrad meets his ex’s lookalike, who eventually convinces him to go get her some cocaine. The elevator of the shifty building happens to lose power as he’s trying to return to her, and he becomes trapped with Corsica herself. Something about him sparks a change in her. Meanwhile, Lucy and Nick are out for drinks (which, when Corsica doesn’t show and Lucy isn’t there to put one of her bands in the empty slot, eventually costs her a job). They get very drunk and very affectionate.
After that night, Nick and Lucy are essentially dating, though it seems they never really made that clear to one another. Nick goes to visit his dad, Ilove (what a hippie name, right?) which goes surprisingly well. After their return, Samoan Sam does some more weird illegal-but-not-exactly-threatening stuff (the poor horse plushies) just before the trial, in which Nick is only given a fine and some community service, instead of the jailtime Josh was pushing for.
Konrad, meanwhile, seems to have fallen for Corsica, despite his highly vocal disdain for popular culture as a whole and frequent derision of her in the past. We learn that Lucy’s ex didn’t leave her, he died pushing her out of the way of a speeding car. She feels the need to seek his forgiveness before pursuing Nick wholeheartedly. Corsica meets up with Konrad several times while staying out of the public eye and they share happy dreams of changing the world for the better. Josh trashes some paintings in a fit of childish rage. Sofia begins putting her suspicions together and goes to warn Nick of the danger he’s in.
When Samoan Sam returns to the apartment with an equally large friend, Konrad manages to fend them both off, through force of will (and liberal application of his arm cast from Sam’s previous visit). Unfortunately, Sofia’s visit throws Nick back into the pit he had so nearly escaped, while Lucy falls ever deeper for him. Eventually Lucy grows curious about Nick’s paintings that he guards so carefully from the eyes of others. She is horrified to discover they’re all Sofia.
She confronts him, and that is the end of any fond interactions between them, as it comes out he slept with Sofia very recently indeed. Corsica and Konrad organize a benefit concert, with great help from Lucy. Josh comes to Lucy’s home in a fit of despair and sleeps on her couch for a night. When she finds a lovingly crafted note saying only “Sofia” that Josh had dropped by mistake, she is hit by a stroke of brilliance.
A new exhibit is set up in Josh’s gallery, to replace the paintings he destroyed. An exhibit full of Nick’s works. Sofia herself features as a living art piece, infatuated with Nick now that he’s “made something of himself”. Corsica shows up to announce the benefit concert they’d been working so hard on behind the scenes. Lucy refuses to attend, despite her single-handed orchestration of the event. Sofia reconciles with Josh after Nick rejects her.
Corsica publicly announces her romantic feelings for Konrad, and Nick makes a last ditch effort to win Lucy back, a carefully painted piece of Lucy and her deceased lover performing together as students. It fails. Lucy leaves for Germany with the band she now manages and unfortunately there’s a sequel.
The writing was... inconsistent. There were moments and even stretches of absolute brilliance that I adored and that I immediately wanted to share with others, but at the same time those moments would occasionally disappear. There were typing errors, skipped words and misspellings and other minor flaws that shouldn’t have mattered but sort of threw me out of my groove, so to speak. I can understand the author’s choices but I was still deeply incensed that Nick and Lucy did not get back together.
I think perhaps a little more time spent editing would have been good. It feels like it was written in fits and spurts, as long chunks will have similar voice but not feel quite the same as preceding or following chunks. It seems to me that the thing the author needs the most is simply more practice, strengthening their “voice” so they don’t have to consciously direct energy towards being consistent.
