The Flatshare

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary (2019) 325 pages

Tiffy needs an inexpensive place to live. It's apparent that her ex-boyfriend is not coming back after she hears he's engaged to someone else. She learns about a small flat where she and the owner would share the premises, just not at the same time. She would get it on evenings and weekends, and the owner (Leon) would get it 9-6 on weekdays, since he works the nightshift as a hospice nurse. Against the judgment of her friends, she goes for it. She never even meets Leon ahead of the agreement; his girlfriend Kay handles the deal.

Tiffy and Leon write Post-It notes to each other on a regular basis, and learn about each other by the notes and by catching details in the apartment. (For example, did he have his coffee and wash his cup, or was he so rushed that he left it unfinished?) Eventually, they learn about each other's relationships: Tiffy's ex-boyfriend, Justin, starts showing up unexpectedly at events that he shouldn't know about. Now that she seems to be fine without him, he appears to want her back. As Tiffy puts distance between herself and Justin, she has feelings that he was gaslighting her, making her look like she had a bad memory and bad judgement. Leon's girlfriend, Kay, is fine, but she doesn't have faith in the innocence of Leon's younger brother, Richie, who was found guilty at a trial less than a year ago. Leon is tied in knots about Richie and doesn't know what to do, whether he can save up enough money to get him an appeal.

Eventually Tiffy and Leon actually meet in person, in a embarrassingly funny way, and then their relationship goes to a new level. This write-up doesn't begin to catch the flavor of the book, but suffice it to say, it's funny and deep and satisfying all the way through, with secondary characters that are fabulous.

Talking to strangers

Talking to strangers: what we should know about the people we don't know / Malcolm Gladwell, read by the author and a cast of others, 386 pgs.

You meet someone who is quite different from yourself.  Maybe from a different culture, maybe a different age group or ethnicity.  What could go wrong with your communications?  Plenty!  In this book, Gladwell looks into the psychology behind how we evaluate strangers, how we communicate with them and what we think we know about them.  The problem is that study after study says we are mostly wrong about what we think we know.  But not just you and I.  Police officers, judges, spy bosses, planners, even psychologist.  There are enough examples here to make you rethink a lot of your own attitudes.  If the CIA can't find double agents and they have people there whose SOLE JOB is to find double agents, what chance to the rest of us have?  There is a lot here that could/should disturb you.  The audio version is fantastic...using, whenever possible, the real voices of people Gladwell writes about.