The rom-coms that raised me

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who watch The Holiday every December without fail, and those who are wrong. I say this with love. I also say it as someone who has, on more than one occasion, genuinely considered swapping houses with a stranger just to see what would happen.

The Holiday and When Harry Met Sally are the two films I come back to more than any others. They are very different movies. One is about running away and accidentally finding exactly what you needed. The other is about two people who are standing right next to it for twelve years before they finally get out of their own way. Together, they cover pretty much every way a love story can go sideways before it goes right.

"What both films understand, and what I've tried to carry into my own writing, is that the best love stories are really just stories about people learning to be honest."

When Harry Met Sally gave me the slow burn. A tension you can see coming from about forty minutes in and somehow it still gets you every time. It also gave me the deli scene, which I will not elaborate on further except to say that it set a very high bar for comic timing in romantic fiction and I think about it more than is probably healthy.

The Holiday gave me something a little different. It gave me the idea that sometimes love requires a complete change of scenery. That you might have to get on a plane, or swap your life temporarily with someone else's, before you can see clearly enough to know what you actually want. There's also a cottage in the English countryside in that film, which I will simply leave here without further comment.

Writing That English Summer felt like trying to bottle both of those things. The slow realization of When Harry Met Sally and the running-toward-something energy of The Holiday, with two people who are, frankly, their own worst obstacles.

If those films mean as much to you as they do to me, I hope this book feels a little like coming home.