Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane
May Attaway, who is forty, feels more at home around plants than with people. She has become more introspective over the years, enjoying the language and her occupation as a gardener while keeping her neighbours at a distance and attentively monitoring them. But when she unexpectedly receives a leave of absence from work, May is motivated to get in touch with four former close pals. She visits each one of them individually because she is aware that they will never be able to properly reunite. May, a classics enthusiast, views her path as a female Odyssey. What might the world have looked like if Penelope had embarked on her own voyage rather than waiting?
Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane
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A lady explores friendship in the digital age in RULES FOR VISITING. May enjoys the small pleasures along the way, such as afternoon ice cream with a long-lost acquaintance, surprise postcards from an unanticipated crush, and an emotional encounter with old beauty. She is keenly aware of the grandeur and silliness of everyday people. May chooses to avoid her friends’ carefully managed online lives and instead meet them in their chaotic analogue ones, despite experiencing a taste of viral internet stardom.
In the end, May discovers that a best friend is someone who understands your story, and she motivates the rest of us to perfect the art of visiting.
What does friendship mean in the social media age? In Jessica Frances Kane’s novel RULES FOR VISITING, May, a lovely character in her own right, resolves to secure her lifelong connections in order to prevent herself from being even more mired in the rut she now feels she is in. May will demonstrate how she intends to go about doing this. May has been given paid time off by the university where she works, and she currently resides in the house where she grew up with her somewhat housebound widower father. She makes the decision to use this as a sort of sabbatical by taking a number of journeys to visit her best friends, with whom she has recently only maintained contact via Facebook.
For us as readers, what transpires during each encounter with two childhood pals, a college friend, and another from graduate school, turns into a romp. It is pure entertainment. Yes, May does a lot of introspection. We also want that. But she is so hilarious that you can’t not but adore her and her eccentricities. She has strict guidelines for guests. She has mastered it to a T. Furthermore, it comes as no surprise; she is an expert at looking after the huge garden at the university, so why shouldn’t she be able to look after her friends just as well? The same rules apply—you wouldn’t want to overwater or concentrate too much on one blossom over another.
For us as readers, what transpires during each encounter with two childhood pals, a college friend, and another from graduate school, turns into a romp. It is pure entertainment. Yes, May does a lot of introspection. We also want that. But she is so hilarious that you can’t not but adore her and her eccentricities. She has strict guidelines for guests. She has mastered it to a T. Furthermore, it comes as no surprise; she is an expert at looking after the huge garden at the university, so why shouldn’t she be able to look after her friends just as well? The same rules apply—you wouldn’t want to overwater or concentrate too much on one blossom over another.
It’s a situation comedy where the setting for the situation—a visit—changes. It centres on May, a gardener, rekindling friendships. It has a subdued sense of humour and is cosy, at ease, and familiar—yet still new. I don’t care how awkward May is, I want to be friends with her. I want to spend time with her and have her take care of my garden as well. However, I’d need to purchase a garden first. clever, funny, compassionate, and nice. Follow May as she enters the physical world with her own oomph, disrupting the quiet of the digital one. Meanwhile, she made analogies between her personal trip and great literary works.
