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Wait for Me, Jack
It was a fact that who you married altered you. It mattered very much how that person changed you.
Jack and Milly get together in 1952, determined to live the American Dream. As America moves into the modern age, so do they, but love isn't easy to maintain for sixty years. Warm, funny and devastatingly perceptive about men and women, Wait for Me, Jack follows the fortunes and failures of Jack and Milly and reveals a few truths about love and marriage.
Jack and Milly get together in 1952, determined to live the American Dream. As America moves into the modern age, so do they, but love isn't easy to maintain for sixty years. Warm, funny and devastatingly perceptive about men and women, Wait for Me, Jack follows the fortunes and failures of Jack and Milly and reveals a few truths about love and marriage.
300 pages, ebook
First published January 19, 2017
25 people are currently reading
542 people want to read
About the author
Addison Jones
10 books2 followersCynthia Rogerson is a Californian Scottish writer living in the Highlands. Winner of the V.S.Pritchett Prize, she’s published a memoir, five novels and a collection of short stories. I Love You Goodbye was translated into six languages, short-listed for Scottish Novel of the Year, and dramatized for BBC radio. Wait for Me Jack was published in 2017 under Addison Jones. A Sunday Times top summer read, it’s also an audiobook. Her memoir titled Wah! was shortlisted for the Highland Book Prize in 2023. She’s supervised on the Edinburgh University Creative Writing program and holds a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship. www.cynthiarogerson.org
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 5, 2017
What a wonderful book, and SO beautifully written! Copies should be required reading for any couples considering marriage. The story is told in reverse, so that they're elderly and frail when we first meet them, then jumps back in periods of 18 months to 3 years, for 60 years. On the side, we get a cultural history of the USA, but we also understand how this somewhat ill-suited couple - the cultured Jack, who works in publishing and isn't entirely faithful; and Milly, who just wants to be a wife and have a husband and family and home she can be proud of, and watch her soap operas when they finally get a TV - got together, and stay together. It's also a book about ageing, and the fact that what you dream for is very rarely what you get. And family - on the way they pick up three extra children, amidst tragedy. I guess what I took from it most is how much damn hard work the American Dream was for that generation, and the fact that they weren't going to throw the towel in, Goddamnit, they'd get through it! After all, they'd got through the war, hadn't they? It also demonstrates how easy men had it - "Pass me a beer, Milly, what a day I've had!" And she never complains about her workload (although he does about his.)
It's an often sad, yet ultimately uplifting book. And by the end, that title will surely break your heart.
A must-read.
It's an often sad, yet ultimately uplifting book. And by the end, that title will surely break your heart.
A must-read.
March 15, 2017
Novel set in CALIFORNIA "positively loaded with clever imagery"
Jacko and Billie, both in their early twenties, meet in a San Francisco office in 1950. Billie is a young typist whose only ambition is to be married and have children and has already decided that her role in life will be to make some man happy. Jacko, a couple of years her senior, is smitten by her Marilyn Monroe hairstyle and her cute knees and asks her out. Billie, however, already has a date that evening and rejects him but, on the spur of the moment, just as he’s disappearing around a corner, she runs after him, shouting. Jacko stops and turns around, with a look of “pure, smart-ass delight.” The second chapter, set in 2014, shows us the couple, now Milly and Jack, in their eighties. The description of the pair is brutal in its honesty. Jack is cranky and creaky, kept alive thanks to a plethora of tablets. Milly’s incontinence pads sprout out of her pyjama bottoms and she smells of urine and worse.
Wait for me, Jack then works backwards, telling us the story of Milly and Jack’s marriage in reverse. On the whole, it’s not a cheery story. Jacko is selfish through and through and has given Milly a very difficult life; there have been countless affairs including a child by another woman. He is incessantly critical of her, thinking that her life at home with their five children has got to be easier than his working life. Milly dreads accounts night, when Jack, who keeps rigid control of the household budget, will make her justify every cent she has spent. Milly is an engaging character: likeable, dreamy, generous of spirit and the reader’s sympathies rest with her, more often than not. However, we are also given, here and there, the other side of Jack; the man who had intellectual aspirations and dreamed of becoming a novelist.
The novel is set in California, near San Francisco, but there is little sense of place, as we are constantly in Milly and Jack’s heads, hearts and home, but, what it lacks in place, it more than makes up for in time. This is a really powerful evocation of period, from the fifties with its rigid rules and restricted roles for woman to the sixties and the San Francisco flower power era.
Wait for me, Jack is skilfully written; it is full of poignant, sometimes heart-stoppingly painful descriptions and positively loaded with clever imagery, as Jack and Milly try to make sense of their marriage. Early in the novel, Jack ponders that marriage might be like dancing to radio music. “You didn’t know what song you’d get next.” On the other hand, Milly thinks that marriage might be like “an imperfect haircut one just had to endure till it grew out”. It’s probably worth reading just for the imagery alone and it’s certainly a thought-provoking read and brilliantly observed. The problem is that it is more of an analysis of a marriage than a novel. The structure, with its reverse plot and constant jumps back in time, simultaneously makes for a disjointed read and complete loss of anticipation, which is a shame when there is so much else that is good about this novel.
Jacko and Billie, both in their early twenties, meet in a San Francisco office in 1950. Billie is a young typist whose only ambition is to be married and have children and has already decided that her role in life will be to make some man happy. Jacko, a couple of years her senior, is smitten by her Marilyn Monroe hairstyle and her cute knees and asks her out. Billie, however, already has a date that evening and rejects him but, on the spur of the moment, just as he’s disappearing around a corner, she runs after him, shouting. Jacko stops and turns around, with a look of “pure, smart-ass delight.” The second chapter, set in 2014, shows us the couple, now Milly and Jack, in their eighties. The description of the pair is brutal in its honesty. Jack is cranky and creaky, kept alive thanks to a plethora of tablets. Milly’s incontinence pads sprout out of her pyjama bottoms and she smells of urine and worse.
Wait for me, Jack then works backwards, telling us the story of Milly and Jack’s marriage in reverse. On the whole, it’s not a cheery story. Jacko is selfish through and through and has given Milly a very difficult life; there have been countless affairs including a child by another woman. He is incessantly critical of her, thinking that her life at home with their five children has got to be easier than his working life. Milly dreads accounts night, when Jack, who keeps rigid control of the household budget, will make her justify every cent she has spent. Milly is an engaging character: likeable, dreamy, generous of spirit and the reader’s sympathies rest with her, more often than not. However, we are also given, here and there, the other side of Jack; the man who had intellectual aspirations and dreamed of becoming a novelist.
The novel is set in California, near San Francisco, but there is little sense of place, as we are constantly in Milly and Jack’s heads, hearts and home, but, what it lacks in place, it more than makes up for in time. This is a really powerful evocation of period, from the fifties with its rigid rules and restricted roles for woman to the sixties and the San Francisco flower power era.
Wait for me, Jack is skilfully written; it is full of poignant, sometimes heart-stoppingly painful descriptions and positively loaded with clever imagery, as Jack and Milly try to make sense of their marriage. Early in the novel, Jack ponders that marriage might be like dancing to radio music. “You didn’t know what song you’d get next.” On the other hand, Milly thinks that marriage might be like “an imperfect haircut one just had to endure till it grew out”. It’s probably worth reading just for the imagery alone and it’s certainly a thought-provoking read and brilliantly observed. The problem is that it is more of an analysis of a marriage than a novel. The structure, with its reverse plot and constant jumps back in time, simultaneously makes for a disjointed read and complete loss of anticipation, which is a shame when there is so much else that is good about this novel.
April 17, 2017
Beautifully written story about a marriage. It begins and ends at the beginning of the relationship, and in between the story of the marriage is told - in reverse order. It's a difficult technique to pull off, but it works here.
The characters are well drawn and it's a compelling novel that propels the reader through the story (backwards). It's an honest look at a long, not always happy marriage. The tenacity of the husband and wife, Jack and Billie, is something to behold. The marriage itself is really the protagonist in the story. I found myself fearful for it, celebrating it, marvelling at it.
This is an unusual novel, and I'm glad I came by it. Highly recommended!
The characters are well drawn and it's a compelling novel that propels the reader through the story (backwards). It's an honest look at a long, not always happy marriage. The tenacity of the husband and wife, Jack and Billie, is something to behold. The marriage itself is really the protagonist in the story. I found myself fearful for it, celebrating it, marvelling at it.
This is an unusual novel, and I'm glad I came by it. Highly recommended!
March 17, 2019
Very very true! I have always told my children that people change...do not expect partners to remain the same nor for themselves to remain the same, because time and circumstances almost always change us...and the trick to keeping a relationship healthy is being able to adjust to those changes. In ourselves and others. It is NOT always easy!! But necessary...
February 6, 2017
Jack and Milly’s marriage is like the weather, with sun either too fierce or blocked by clouds. They inhabit a climate with myriad variations of hot and cold, seeming different from the inside than from outside, from morning or evening, when filtered through a prism of the promise of happiness or resignation to “for better or worse”. Meeting in a San Francisco office in 1950, when both are in their early twenties, it’s a marriage a particular place and time. Yet, even for the contemporary reader more sceptical of the marriage plot, it raises questions about the combination of commitment and compromise entailed in sharing one’s life with another human being. Should we fight for happiness or surrender to what works? If, instead, we settle for good enough, how do we know when we’ve got there? What, after all, is marriage for?
Full review annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/2017/01...
Full review annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/2017/01...
May 16, 2021
Wait for Me, Jack really surprised me as a book. The novel starts with the first time the main couple meets, and then tracks their marriage backwards from the end, jumping through time back to the beginning. Important things: I've never been married and the couple in this book get married in the 1950s. That said, though, it's a super interesting insight into marriage. Jacko and Billie's views on marriage are very much their own, very much of their time, different from how later generations have come to view marriage. As such, it really forced me to think a lot about my thoughts on marriage.
As the book goes on, reading about Billie and Jacko's marriage is increasingly depressing. Ultimately, they seem happier at the end of their lives together than the start—or at least they settled into a resigned happiness. It would be a very interesting book to discuss with others, given the thoughts it raises on marriage and the marital dynamics in focus. Wait for Me, Jack is certainly a novel I'll keep thinking about.
As the book goes on, reading about Billie and Jacko's marriage is increasingly depressing. Ultimately, they seem happier at the end of their lives together than the start—or at least they settled into a resigned happiness. It would be a very interesting book to discuss with others, given the thoughts it raises on marriage and the marital dynamics in focus. Wait for Me, Jack is certainly a novel I'll keep thinking about.
July 10, 2020
This story of a young couple trying to live the American Dream is told backwards. It starts at the end of Jack and Millie's lives and in increments of around three years goes backwards till it reaches 1952 when they met.
It is intensely descriptive of all the things in marriage that don't work while making it clear that despite everything Jack and Millie care about each other and stay together (with one blip in the middle) till the end.
I particularly liked the earlier chapters set in old age because authors so rarely write about old age and because the irritations of age were mitigated so well by love. It felt very real.
My only criticism is that because the lives were being written backwards there did seem to be superfluous repetition and super extensive inner thought, needed I suppose to make sense of the timing, but nevertheless over wordy. If I'd been editing I would have chopped some of this out.
It is intensely descriptive of all the things in marriage that don't work while making it clear that despite everything Jack and Millie care about each other and stay together (with one blip in the middle) till the end.
I particularly liked the earlier chapters set in old age because authors so rarely write about old age and because the irritations of age were mitigated so well by love. It felt very real.
My only criticism is that because the lives were being written backwards there did seem to be superfluous repetition and super extensive inner thought, needed I suppose to make sense of the timing, but nevertheless over wordy. If I'd been editing I would have chopped some of this out.
July 13, 2017
The first half was wonderful - a beautiful, heart-wrenching and unclichéed description of a relationship that touched me deeply. Then in the second half I found myself getting more and more gently bored. The backwards timeline didn't work that well for me, I found it hard to be interested in reading the long version of events when I'd already been given a synopsis, however well-written that long version might be.
August 21, 2017
This family saga follows the marriage of Millie and Jack over the sixty years since their meeting with all of the ups and downs of family relationships and their quest for the American dream. Warm and funny at times, a realistic portrayal of 20th century life in small-town America.
December 13, 2019
Couldn’t finish it....
June 12, 2021
Brilliant
April 1, 2019
See my review here:
https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2019...
https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2019...
October 8, 2024
My first time reading this type of book but I loved it. The chapters were very long at times but I didn’t mind because the story was so gripping. The writing style fitted the story plot well and made sense.
The whole story plot was a full of emotions. One minute my heart was broken/aching for Millie, one minute I was hating Jack with a passion and the next my heart was full of warmness.
The character and history development during this book was just on point.
I think I found a new love for the historical romance genre. Third romance book of my ‘romance journey’ and I really loved it.
Highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys romance with a bit of history.
The whole story plot was a full of emotions. One minute my heart was broken/aching for Millie, one minute I was hating Jack with a passion and the next my heart was full of warmness.
The character and history development during this book was just on point.
I think I found a new love for the historical romance genre. Third romance book of my ‘romance journey’ and I really loved it.
Highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys romance with a bit of history.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews