vineri, 15 august 2014

Cecelia Ahern - The Time of my Life (Plot)


           Plot

The novel opens by presenting us the main character Lucy Silchester who received another letter which contained an appointment with her Life:
“Dear Lucy Silchester,
You have an appointment for Monday, May 30
Yours sincerely,
Life”[1]
The letter had as stamp the triple spirals of life. Lucy knew what that means because she received another two similar letters and she searched on Google the significance of the symbol, but she didn’t attach any importance to those letters. Before Lucy decides herself to call her Life, she tells us about her ex boyfriend, Blake, who she left, but she still loves him. She even is watching each Black’s TV emission called ‘Wish you were here’ being jealous of each girl that she sees besides him.
Missing several appointments, Lucy finally decides to telephones her Life, but in order to have courage or as Lucy says to need to care, she half drained a bottle of wine. She didn’t telephone in order to make another appointment but to excuse herself that she can’t go because she is at work. The Life Agency tries to make a suitable time for the appointment, but Lucy finds for each time some excuses – it’s her friend’s birthday party and she has to go, she must go with her car at service - thinking that she will get out of it: I waited for her to say, Oh silly us, asking you to come on a work day, let’s cancel the entire thing, but she didn’t.”[2] The Life Agency told her that they can acclimate their own schedule according to her. Seeing that she can’t get out of it, Lucy set the appointment for Sunday.
On Saturday, Lucy is invited to have a meal with her parents, grandmother and her two ‘successful’ brothers Riley and Philip because Lucy’s mother had an announcement to do. The meal is not as a usual one as it should be in family. It became an intensive one because Lucy’s mother and grandmother started a discussion regarding the fact that Lucy has almost 30 years and she is not even married. When finally their mother told them that she and their father would renew their wedding vows, Lucy also announced them, before leaving, that she would have an appointment with her Life. She finds out that her family already knew about that and they even gave their signature allowing The Life Agency to intervene.
Next day, Lucy, goes to meet her Life who, for her surprise, is a man like any other human being. They are talking about Lucy’s life and she is surprised to see that she cannot lie him because she knows everything about her and he even has in his computer all the details and every time Lucy lied him about her job, Life corrected her by saying the truth. She became angry on him and left before the meeting was over and went to drink a coffee were she meets a gay that asks her permission to sit beside her because the bistro was full. Lucy accepts, but she leaves saying that she has to meet her boyfriend. At home, while watching TV, Lucy’s brother, Riley, came to visit her, but she didn’t let him to enter.
Lucy finally decides to call the Magic Carpet Cleaning Company whose number was given to her by the secretary of The Life Agency. When a man responded, she thought that she wrong the number because that person was at band Aslan’s concert, but even so they had a friendly and amusing conversation and they even keep in touch one to another and they send images with different part of their faces trying to make the ‘puzzle’.
A week later, Lucy wake up and see another envelope from her Life. Since she met Life, he sent her an appointment every day, but she ignored all. At her job, she finds out that following day she has to be the ‘guide’ for a Spanish named Agusto Fernández. Lucy meets her friends at The Wine Bistro, the place where they usually get together; they were also Blake’s friends and they discuss about his TV emission what Lucy didn’t like, so she leaves. She also tries to learn to speak Spanish, but she hadn’t succeeded and the following day at work, Lucy forgot almost everything and she had to recognize that she didn’t know Spanish. After the incident that took place at her job (Steve was discharged and came to endanger the others with a gun), the following day, being worried for her, Riley came and took Lucy to his apartment where her mother was waiting for her. Her mother and her brother give her a lot of letters that Lucy’s Life sent also to them.
Lucy makes another appointment with Life, but she has to cancel it because Claire begged Lucy to take care of her invisible baby, Conor, while she visits her mother to the hospital. Lucy calls life at Starbucks where they had to meet and tells to her Life that she can’t come so, her Life comes to Lucy’s apartment because she didn’t believe her and he wanted to check. He asks her to show him the baby, but Lucy shows him only a photo and tells him that there is no baby, maybe he died, and now Claire lives in an imaginary world. Life tells her that from now on he will go with her wherever she goes and they agree to find a name for him because she cannot present him to the others as her Life, so she gave him the name Cosmo Brown and he moves with her. Lucy telephones again to The Magic Carpet Cleaning Company and they agree to come on Sunday to clean her carpet. Cosmo Brown or Lucy’s Life goes with Lucy at the Company where she works. He tells the truth that Lucy doesn’t know Spanish and she doesn’t smoke. He also goes with Lucy to her meeting with her friend Melanie who gets upset when Lucy is bound to tell her the truth; and to her meeting with her friends.                             
The guy from The Magic Carpet Company comes to clean Lucy’s carpet and Lucy discovers that she didn’t wrong the number and that he is the guy, Don Lockwood, with who she was speaking and texting messages all this time. They spent the night together and she feels very closed to him, so there is no need to lie also him. Lucy and Life have to go to Lucy’s parents, but they get into contradictory argument and she thinks that he wouldn’t come; so she convinces Don, who came to her parents to clean a carpet, to pretend to be her Life. Don accepts and he is presented as being Life. He even defends Lucy, her father gets angry and tells him to leave. At that moment appears Lucy’s Life, but it was too late.
Don invites Lucy for a coffee, but she refuses because she mixed the feelings and thinks that she is still in love with Blake, so she decides to go Wexford and take Blake back. Even if Cosmo doesn’t agree with this idea, he decides to go with her. When Lucy meets Blake, she realizes that nothing has changed except her, and she even rejects Blake and she told him that he must tell the truth to their friends that he was the one who left her, but Blake doesn’t want to be seen as the bad one.
            Lucy comes back to home where her mother was crying while waiting for her. She tells to Lucy that the wedding vows renewal would not take place anymore and she confesses to Lucy that she has some misunderstandings with her husband. When Lucy’s 30th birthday comes, she decides to invite her friends to the Wine Bistro and to tell them the truth that Blake was the one who left her. Meanwhile, comes also Blake with Jenna (the one who goes with Blake in different excursions for his TV emission). Blake begged Lucy not to tell to their friend the truth and he starts speaking about the contract that was signed for his new book of recopies and for a TV emission, but one of the friends got a belly of Blake’s story and said him to shut up and let Lucy speak because she said that has something to tell them. Before telling them the truth, Lucy begged her friend not to attack Blake and then she said that she didn’t leave him but he was the one who left her and had that idea of telling to the others that Lucy left him.  Everyone is surprised to hear that and they start attacking Blake for what he did.
When all left, Life accompanied Lucy, but he didn’t want to enter and told her that she didn’t need his help anymore. In a moment of obfuscation Lucy wants to kiss Life, but he didn’t let her. Life finished his mission so he left. Lucy visits Don saying that she came for the advert for a room mate and they spent another night together. On 6 August, Saturday, a beautiful day of summer, in Glendalough took place the wedding vows renewal of Lucy’s parents and she was the bridesmaid. At the ceremony was also present Life and Don. In the end Lucy remains with Don, but just as friends because she said that she is not prepared yet for another relationship although they spent many nights together; as Life said, sometimes the wrong numbers are the ones which are correct.

P.S: Sorry pentru posibilele greseli de scriere :D





[1] Cecelia Ahern, The time of my life, HarperCollins, 2013  ( chapter 1, page 14)
[2] Cecelia Ahern, The time of my life, HarperCollins, 2013 ( chapter 3, page 20)

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