Innocence by Kathleen Tessaro is set in London on two contemporary timelines: 1986 and 2001.
Chapters alternate between timelines, starting in 2001. Evie is a single mother, teaching adult education drama and poetry to a handful of seniors. Not the future she dreamed of when she came to London to study acting.
The first thing you should know about Robbie is she's dead (hit and run in New York City). The second thing you should know is we'd lost touch years before that. Not exactly fallen out so much as given up on one another. We no longer saw the world in the same way. She refused to grow up and, at the time, I thought being grown up was a very serious, terribly important business. I'm not so sure now.
In 1986, eighteen-year-old Evie leaves Ohio for London, to study drama. First night in London, Evie stays at the Belle View Hotel and Guesthouse. Boiling hot water steams out of one tap, icy cold from the other. A certain amount of speed and physical endurance is required to wash your face but the reward is a genuine feeling of accomplishment. However, the reality of shared bathroom facilities is another matter.
Next day she starts at the Actors Drama Workshop in North London, also not what she expected from the advertisements (and huge fees). What if I've made a huge, expensive mistake?
Evie becomes close friends (and shares a house) with fellow drama students Robbie and Imogene. Robbie is from New York City, wild and flamboyant, determined to make Evie "loosen up" and stop being so serious. Immediately upon meeting, Robbie insists they drink sidecars and smoke cigarettes (Evie's first). "Let's go sit somewhere where we can pass out in comfort," Robbie suggests.
In 2001, with class over one night, Evie's ready to leave for home when Robbie appears in the doorway. The appearance is so brief, Evie assumes she imagined it, and feels sad. The older you get, the more friends you lose to marriage, children, work; to adulthood.
Evie's home in 2001 is not your average house share. Bunny Gold considers herself more a patron of the arts than a landlord. She rents rooms in her (long-ago stately, now shabby) Georgian house only to artists, dancers, musicians, performers. Evie's current housemates are an opera singer (Allyson) and a musician (Piotr). This is one of the few advantages to shared housing: not all dramas are your own. Plus "the love of her life", her four-year-old son Alex.
In 1986, Robbie bullies Evie into going out on a blind double date to a nightclub, and insists Evie should call herself Raven. It's love at first sight when Evie/Raven meets Jake. She's swept up in his wake as he becomes a popular rock musician. Out of love, she gives up a cherished dream.
June 21, 1991 Evie's world goes topsy-turvy again. She makes a very hard, necessary decision. Back to pursuing acting on her own, the waiting and endless auditions are both tedious and stressful. Then one night (June 21, 1996) she gets the chance to show her talent as an actress. But her life took another turn, yet again, as a result of that night.
If only we could choose which memories we keep and which ones we discard for ever. But instead, the mind clings to events that baffle; watching them, like a movie, over and over. But without the power to choose a different path.
In 2001 Robbie occasionally appears, intent on pushing Evie out of her shell, getting her to take a chance, live again. Evie laments I've lost the knack for social situations; it's like a muscle which, if you don't exercise, shrivels and dies.
When housemate Allyson leaves for Rome, hired by Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Evie understands very well Allyson needs to chase her dreams. I remember what it's like to risk everything - to pick up and leave in pursuit of a dream. It just seems so long ago now; like something that belongs to another age and another woman, far removed from me.
Finally, Evie takes a chance again on love (a relief, for the reader who's seen her pass up so much).
The only problem I have with the book: the title of Part 4, the month Evie goes into labor, cannot be right, based on Alex's birthdate and the night he was conceived. How did it escape notice by an editor?