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Book Review: 'Someday, Someday, Maybe'

Katie Buenneke |
May 11, 2013 | 8:19 p.m. PDT

Theater Editor

The novel is actress Lauren Graham's first book. (Ballantine Books)
The novel is actress Lauren Graham's first book. (Ballantine Books)
Actors are some of the most insecure people in the world. Good actors are more than capable of putting on a front and pretending to be confident, but most actors constantly question themselves and their choice of career. It makes sense—the performing arts are notoriously difficult to break into, and even established actors face rejection after rejection.

Lauren Graham, an actress herself ("Gilmore Girls," "Parenthood"), is familiar with the pitfalls of aspiring to be an artist, and "Someday, Someday, Maybe," her first novel, communicates that quite well. The story follows Franny Banks, a New York transplant in the early '90s. Well aware of how easy it is to flounder, Franny gives herself a six-month deadline to at least start on the road to success before packing up and moving back home to marry her college sweetheart and give up her acting aspirations. As the deadline draws nearer, Franny finds herself facing more and more challenges, both professionally and romantically.

Graham has written a sympathetic narrator, though for all the details she provides about Franny's life, the heroine still comes off as somewhat bland. The book has a delightful sense of humor to it, which makes it a very enjoyable and quick read, despite its length.

"Someday, Someday, Maybe" quickly falls into a pattern of sorts, wherein Franny faces a challenge, which she attacks with vigor, even when she hasn't necessarily made the right decision. This pattern is comforting, but it renders the end of the book rather confusing. The novel does not come to a traditional ending where all the loose ends are tied up, but instead stops abruptly. While this works as a literary device to some extent (stories in real life rarely end neatly, and one can't help but want to know more about how Franny's life turns out), it is mostly jarring and confusing.

All in all, "Someday, Someday, Maybe" is a fun read. It's easy to feel affection for Franny (who may or may not be representative of Graham's younger self) and to want her to succeed. With plenty of keen insight and wry commentary about the nature of the "biz," "Someday, Someday, Maybe" is an enjoyable novel.

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