ALVA JOYCE, the heroine of this new romantic novel by Rose Doyle, is a poor little rich girl who has spent twenty-seven years waiting for life to begin. She is a weak and ineffectual character, quite possibly even stupid, but she is nevertheless determined to find happiness, and happiness, by Alva's feeble understanding, is equivalent to (you've got three guesses, and the first two don't count) Love.
Stifled throughout her childhood by a dictatorial father, she finally makes her break to the big smoke where she embarks on a short-lived career in journalism. Predictably, though, she is too thin-skinned and, when she finally opens her eyes sufficiently to see that her truly nasty boyfriend is snaking others simultaneously, she scarpers again. A discreet advertisement calling for an investor in De Nova House Hotel on the south Dublin coast gives her the exit visa and the new tomorrow she thinks she wants.
De Nova House soon becomes another albatross for poor Alva, however not only is it a faltering enterprise, but its co-owners are impossible. Theo Donovan evades the hotel's rare guests by digging up dandelions; his sister, Ellen, meanwhile disappears into the bottle, rearing her ugly head only to scare away Alva's bread and butter.
Alva is blessed, though, and her saving grace this time comes in the form of a contract to use De Nova House as a set for a film entitled Death Diminishes. Yes, of course, she falls in love with its director, Luke O'Hanlon. When filming finally finishes and Luke goes off to Colombia, Alva pines for him and knows deep down in her heart of hearts that she really can't stick De Nova House a minute longer. What makes it even more unbearable is that Luke doesn't even send her a card! "Her nights had been filled with dreams in which his lifeless body lay at the bottom of a ravine, or ... the discovery of a Christmas tree on a rocky outpost dripping red with his blood."
Alva needs yet another exit visa. This time, another member of the film crew buys her out, thus enabling Alva to go to the ends of the earth in pursuit of her beloved Luke. And so she does, and before long they are making perfect nookey in "a most beautiful room". She's done it! She's done it! In the face of adversity, Alva has found true love at last. And, thankfully, the novel ends.
Rose Doyle has mastered the romance novelist's formulae and Alva will doubtlessly do well. It will feature in newsstands at airports and train stations; it will be taken to nudist beaches and its pages will be dog-eared and marked by oily, eager fingers hanging on Doyle's every word. It will be shared by friends and it will at once give a modicum of hope and deepen the dissatisfaction of hordes of women coast-to-coast. Bless me, but I cannot see the purpose of this sort of book.