Vince and Joy

by Lisa Jewell Narrated by Leighton Pugh, Antonia Beamish

Overview

From adolescent snogging to apartment shares, relationships, career crises and children, Vince and Joy is the unforgettable story of two lives lived separately but forever entwined. Back in the 80s, teenagers Vince and Joy met, fell desperately in love, parted, and never quite said goodbye. Now, nearly twenty years later, they've both begun to ask themselves if that long-ago romance was the enduring love they've been searching for...

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Vince Mellon and Joy Downer meet as late-blooming teenagers on a beach vacation, and lose their virginity to one another, then reunite as adults kept apart by bad timing and miscommunication in the winning fourth novel by British bestseller Jewell (A Friend of the Family; Thirtynothing). The first misstep occurs when Joy's vacation is cut short, and the goodbye note (including her contact information) she leaves for Vince outside his window is rendered illegible by the elements. Seven years later, Vince's roommate's wandering cat finds its way to Joy's apartment, which miraculously happens to be around the corner. Too bad for Vince that Joy is about to get married, albeit to a man she isn't attracted to. The narrative takes flight at this point, as Jewell weaves a history of Vince and Joy settling for the wrong people-Vince has a child with a woman who cheats on him, Joy's marriage fails-before fate intervenes one last time. Jewell's lively prose and amusing observations ("They talked about sex like two dieters circling a pile of profiteroles") effortlessly guide the story toward a satisfying ending. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Two teenage misfits meet when their families rent side-by-side vacation caravans on the English seaside. Vince has just recovered from major reconstructive surgery, going from a geek with an underbite to a handsome young man who doesn't quite realize just how good looking he's become. Joy, recently released from the hospital after a nervous breakdown, is shy and unsure about what love means. They instantly connect and end up losing their virginity to each other. When Joy and her family disappear the next day, Vince is heartbroken, convinced he will never find another soul mate. Fast-forward 20 years, and a series of misunderstandings and could-have-beens prevent them from finding true love again. Joy gets married, Vince becomes a father, but neither feels fulfilled. Eventually, it takes Joy's drag-queen friend and Vince's psychic roommate and her cat to reconnect the pair. But is it finally their time to be together? Jewell's (Ralph's Party) fifth novel is high on Britspeak and local flavor, which may appeal to some readers but confuse others. Recommended for larger fiction collections or where modern British authors are popular. Rebecca Vnuk, River Forest P.L., IL Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

British author Jewell's fifth novel (after A Friend of the Family, 2003, etc.) is a deliciously addictive read filled with London oddballs, horrid husbands and romantic destiny. Thirty-five year old Vince is sitting in a kitchen with friends, fresh from the demise of his marriage to wild-child Jess, when the conversation veers to the first time each had sex. Amid tales of awkward fumbling and comic disappointment comes Vince's recollection of Joy. They met as misfit teenagers at a third-rate beach resort-their parents' rented trailers stood side by side-and the two, Joy beautifully fragile despite the army surplus shorts, Vince ruggedly handsome, experienced something close to love at first sight. After much hand-holding and a youthful baring of souls, Vince and Joy have a perfect night of sex in a field, and then through a series of miscommunications, the two are separated for another 17 years. What ensues is mundane life-dreary, disappointing, occasionally brilliant, most often just ordinary, as Vince and Joy attempt to navigate relationships all wrong for them. With a dead-end job and nursing a slightly bruised heart, Joy responds to a personal ad for a man described as handsome. He is not. But accountant George is rather sweet and interesting and enjoys the nightly spliff. And though Joy is not attracted to him in the least, the two begin a pallid romance that leads to a miserable marriage. Meanwhile, Vince has paired up with Jess, a free spirit who's just a bit too free for Vince's taste, what with the partying, the ex-boyfriends hanging about and the drug use, with an infant at home. Through the years, Vince and Joy's paths have crisscrossed, but always at the worst possible time,delaying the inevitable, fated true love. Can Jewell sustain 500 pages of suspense until our lovers reconnect? Can a reader survive this much romantic pudding? Oh, yeah. With wit and well-rendered characters, the author fills her story with keen observations about real life and the possibility of real love.

Birmingham Post

Well-written, engrossing popular fiction, pack this one in your suitcase—you won’t be sorry.

Daily Telegraph (London)

I read the first three-pages—and that was it. I was off, like a bloodhound…It gobbles you up whole.

Entertainment Weekly

Ridiculously readable. A-

The Sun

An unforgettable sweet summer story of two lives that are lived separately—but forever entwined.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172514883
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	12/17/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Vince and Joy

A Novel

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By Lisa Jewell

Harper Paperbacks

Copyright © 2006 Lisa Jewell
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-06-113746-4

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Chapter One

Vince threw his bag on to the bottom level of the stale-smelling bunks, pulled apart the papery curtains painted with ugly brushstroke daisies, and saw her for the first time.

She sat in a deck chair, her knees brought up to her chin, holding a magazine in her right hand while she picked absent-mindedly at black-painted toenails with the other. Her hair was dark brown and to her jaw, with a slight curl that kicked it across her cheeks like wood shavings. She wore all black-a sleeveless vest, oversized army surplus shorts, a frayed canvas ribbon in her hair.

'Vince-give me a hand with the gas, mate.' Chris popped his head around the cream melamine door and winked at him.

'Yeah. In a minute.' Vince turned back to the window and lifted the curtain again.

She was turning a page and rearranging her neat limbs. She fiddled with a small silver cross on a leather thong that hung around her neck and curled her toes around the frame of the deck chair.

Bang, bang, bang.

A hairy fist thumping at the window disturbed his reverie.

'Come on, mate.' Chris's face loomed into view.

'Yeah. OK.' Vince let the curtain drop, and straightened up.

Shit.

There was a beautiful girl. In the caravan next door. Where for the previous four years there had been three boys, two Staffordshire bull terriers and a couple called Geoff and Dianefrom Lincolnshire. He stared at his reflection for a minute in the mirror above the gas fire in the living area. He was thrown. He hadn't factored the possibility of a beautiful girl into the prospect of two-weeks-on-a-caravan-site-in-Hunstanton. There'd never been a beautiful girl here before. Just an ugly girl. An ugly girl called Carol with an even uglier mate called Theresa who threw poorly phrased insults at him, then tried to get off with the sinewy guys who strode across the moving platforms of the Waltzers on Hunstanton pier, pretending to fancy ugly girls as they spun them masochistically in painted cups.

When Vince first came to Hunstanton with Chris and his mum, there'd been other kids of his age to hang out with. They'd gang together and mooch around the fairground, even went to a nightclub once. But as the years passed, they stopped coming. They stayed at home to hang out with their mates or their girlfriends, or they went on holiday with friends to places you needed a passport to get to. Even ugly Carol and Theresa seemed to have something better to do with their summer this year, evidenced by the drawn curtains of their caravan across the way.

Outside, Vince could hear Chris making friendly conversation with the mysterious girl. Fearing that he was missing out on something or, worse still, that Chris was embarrassing him in some way, he pulled his hands through his James Dean hair, ran a fingertip across the angry red scars beneath his jaw line and headed outside.

'Just outside London,' Chris was saying, 'Enfield. What about you?'

'Colchester,' she said, sliding the silver cross back and forth across the leather thong. 'You know, in Essex?'

'Aye,' said Chris, 'I know Colchester. Oh, look who it is.' He turned to look at Vince. 'Vince,' he said, 'come and meet our new neighbour. This is Joy.'

She was even more beautiful close up. Her skin was alabaster white, but there was something about her features that suggested something far-flung. Her nose was small and chiselled, and her cheekbones were set high in her face, but it was her eyes that held clues to the uncommon. Compact and wide-set, flat-lidded and framed with dense, dark lashes-the eyes of a painted china doll.

'Hi,' he said, smiling his new, stiff smile.

'Hiya,' she said, resting her magazine on her lap and sitting on her hands.

He noticed her eyes stray to the scars on his jaw, and turned his hands into fists to stop them wandering protectively towards his face.

'So,' she said, 'are you two mates?'

Vince looked at Chris in mock horror. 'God, no,' he said, 'Chris is my stepdad.'

'Really? How come?'

'Well, he married my mum.' He and Chris exchanged a look and laughed.

'Oh, right. Of course. Just you look kind of the same age.'

'Yeah-everyone says that. Chris is ten years older than me, though. He's twenty-nine. I'm nearly nineteen.'

'Right,' she said, looking from one to the other, almost as if doubting their story. 'And where's your wife? Your mum?'

'She's at the Spar,' said Chris, hauling the gas canister out of the little wooden cupboard and blowing some cobwebs off it. 'Getting us some tea. Should be back in a minute. Oh, talk of the devil, here she is.'

Kirsty's green Mini pulled up alongside the caravan and came to a halt with a crunch of gravel under rubber.

'Give us a hand, you two,' she said, heading for the boot.

Chris instantly dropped the canister and went to his wife's assistance. Vince nodded at Joy and rubbed at his scars.

'God, is that your mum?' said Joy.

'Uh-huh.'

'She's gorgeous.'

Vince turned, expecting to see Beatrice Dalle or someone standing there, but, no, it was just his mother.

'How old is she? She doesn't look old enough to have a son your age.'

'Thirty-seven, I think. Thirty-eight. Something like that.'

'Bloody hell. She's younger than my mum was when she had me.'

They both stared at Vince's mum for a while, and Vince tried to think of something to say. This was officially the longest dialogue he'd ever exchanged with a girl who wasn't either in his class or going out with one of his mates, and the conversation felt like a flighty shuttlecock he was trying to keep in the air with the force of his will alone. He wanted to ask her something interesting. Something about music maybe, or ...

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Vince and Joy by Lisa Jewell Copyright © 2006 by Lisa Jewell. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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