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Holly Bourne has come a long way from her semi-supernatural debut Soulmates, which presupposed the existence of its titular phenomenon and had a secret international organisation apparently prepared to expend resources and time keeping two teenagers apart simply because they fell in love (it was 2013, that was the fashion, it rode the fading coat-tails of young adult fiction’s paranormal heyday). Much of her writing since then has felt like an inflamed response to (or a writing against) that lightning-struck, somewhat clichéd beginning, as an avowedly feminist post-Spinster Club Bourne seeks to bury it beneath talk of tampons, manic pixie dream girls and cacklingly funny female friendships.
It Only Happens In The Movies follows Audrey (named, naturally, for Audrey Hepburn), a very middle-class English girl who starts work at a very middle-class English cinema (it serves bespoke guacamole) to escape an alcoholic mother, her parents’ messy divorce, and the fallout from a break-up. A kind but increasingly cynical teenager, Audrey is often her own worst enemy; she wants to study acting, for example, but has quit drama, and in her own words, “They’re not going to let me into acting school with a D in Geography.” Likewise, almost as soon as Audrey declares she is done with romance, she finds herself attracted to charismatic, regularly stoned co-worker and aspiring filmmaker, Harry. In a novel which aims less to dismantle the conventions of a Hollywood rom-com and more to tear them limb from limb (preferably via zombies and/or opening chapter descriptions of cinema’s most common tropes), it’s clear from the beginning that this prospective relationship is not going to end well.
The novel is Bourne’s most obvious feminist critique yet, though it lacks some of the humour and warm friendships that made the Spinster Club series bearable. Her distinctive style is more like dialogue than prose, and sometimes it can feel like the book is simply shouting at you from the page. The inevitable, uppercase-ridden implosion of delicate relationships and feelings is a little too long coming, but the ending makes for a refreshing, if not entirely unsurprising, twist on the genre.
