Railing against constraints of a man’s world

I like romantic comedies. I like crime fiction. I like novels that expose the misogyny and gender imbalances that still run through western ‘developed’ societies. And I like anything that attacks the hyper-masculine tech-bro culture that I find so loathsome. Nothing Serious is and does all of these things. So, it should follow that I like Nothing Serious. Sadly, things didn’t quite work out between me and Emily J Smith’s debut.

Edie Walker is a successful woman in the man’s world that is San Francisco tech: a Cornell Computer Science graduate in a managerial role at a popular social media firm. Not quite as successful as her best friend and secret beloved, the geeky beanpole turned multi-millionaire CrossFit enthusiast, high-functioning drug-addict, and – post-recent-breakup – serial womaniser Peter Masterson (yes, Emily J Smith can be heavy handed with her character names). Peter and Edie are so close that he invites Edie to the end of his first date with the wise and gorgeous professor and feminist author Amaya Thomas. Such is Amaya’s warmth and insight that Edie immediately forms a minor obsession with her, viewing Amaya as an ideal alternative version of herself, for whom she assumes Peter will certainly fall. Imagine Edie’s confusion, then, when Amaya turns up dead of an apparent overdose following a night with Peter during which he admits to having given her ketamine and broken up with her, but claims to have left Amaya when she was perfectly ok.

Naturally, the reader is eager for Edie to throw herself into the investigation. She does so, but sadly with all the ingenious subtlety of an intellectually deficient walrus. And this is the issue with the book as a whole; it could be so good, but the writing consistently lets it down. Let’s go back to names: the detective on the case is called Ron Boilston, which might be bearable in itself, except he talks like a magic 8 ball modified to deliver detective clichés. Edie’s love for Peter has endured 15 years and evaporates in the course of a single sentence. Peter’s descent into total sexual and emotional callousness is rapid and inadequately prefigured or explained. Edie’s moment of empowerment and liberation from the role that Peter and, by extension, the patriarchal system expects of her is quite effectively bittersweet, but it culminates in an ending that is tenuous and limp.

Ultimately, there’s fun to be had with Nothing Serious, but it ends up living up to its title in accidental ways. Still, it feels like the kind of thing that stands a good chance of being optioned for television, and I’d certainly watch that. Which also means that I’ll probably read Smith’s next novel and hope for a sophomore surprise.