One’s Company by Ashley Hutson
After unexpectedly winning a huge jackpot in the lottery, Bonnie Lincoln hopes to turn her sudden influx of cash into building a dream escape from reality and her distressing past. She envisions a remote mountain sanctuary where she can recreate the beloved apartment complex from Three's Company and embody the central characters: namely, Janet Wood, the level-headed roommate, Chrissy Snow, endearingly naive, and the poised Jack Tripper, along with the building's landlords, the Ropers. And her hope also extends into the characters who come and takeover abandoned roles and vacated slots, such as Cindy, Teri, and Mr. Furley. Despite the challenges, she remains steadfast in her pursuit of healing through this extraordinary journey.
Once Bonnie's project gets off the ground, Hutson's story reminds me so much of a variety of episodes from The Twilight Zone, exploring the repeated themes of delusions, madness, trauma, and rationality. In several episodes, creator (also often the writer) Rod Serling constructed the narrative to challenge contemporary American society. With 1960s Americans using modern technologies to shield themselves from the ugliness and uncertainty of the world, escapism was being directly attacked. While Serling's approach was more to loosen the sand the ostrich-like Americans had decided to use to ignore the growing social concerns around them, Hutson adheres to the same technique in Bonnie trying to overcome and escape the brutality of a recent event along with a less-than stellar upbringing.
What first appears as a quirky-cute spin on the idea of what you'd do with lottery winnings and a nostalgia-injected romp through what money can buy, Hutson delves further and further into where the line of madness lies.
—And so, the curtain falls on our little tale of escapism and regret. Bonnie Lincoln sought refuge in the warm embrace of nostalgia, but found herself lost in a world of make-believe. Her journey to the mountain retreat, to the iconic set of Three's Company, was a journey into the heart of darkness. For Bonnie, the line between fantasy and reality became blurred, and her past traumas caught up with her at last.
But there is a lesson to be learned, dear viewer. A cautionary tale, if you will. We cannot run from our pain forever, nor can we hide from ourselves. Bonnie's journey reminds us that the past must be faced, that our wounds must be healed, and that the only true escape lies in the acceptance of our own flawed and beautiful humanity. And so, I submit this story for your approval, with the hope that it will linger in your mind, and perhaps even teach you something about the power of television, and the power of the human heart.—
Audiobook, as narrated by Rachel Jacobs: Jacobs had a slower and more deliberate delivery than I like. Once I found the right speed for her (for me), she did a pretty good job of handling the increasingly surreal quality to the story and the increasingly off-kilter main character, Bonnie.
I've run into a couple of these narrators lately. I don't typically speed up my audiobooks beyond 1.2 because I prefer to enjoy the performance as well as the story. But Jacobs had to be bumped up to 1.5 easily before she even sounded conversational. I am not a fan of this overly exaggerated and purposeful performance; I'd much rather be surprised that I don't have to speed up the narration at all than to have to do it to avoid my ears bleeding from the strain.
