Book Review – ‘Kind of Sort of Maybe…but Probably Not’ by Imbi Neeme

We love our partners – if we’re lucky enough to have them, and we cheerfully put up with their funny little ways, their odd little habits, their only slightly annoying little tics or behaviours that we tolerantly endure with good grace…

But…

There’s that one thing they do, and with it a sound, a small noise that, despite our deep and abiding love, grinds our gears, sends our cortisol levels through the roof, and turns us to murder mysteries for solace – with undue sympathy for the killer.

I, for example, might bridle when my wife stirs the honey into her tea for too long. (The unrelenting tink…tink…tink…) Similarly, my wife may give me a flat, grim look, usually in bed before settling: “What’s wrong,” I ask, fondly. “I can hear you breathing,” she replies, not fondly. Short of me dashing the cup from my wife’s hand, or her smothering me with a pillow, we endure each other in these moments.

Which brings us to misophonia, or ‘sound rage’ – the severe, unwanted, and highly reactive intolerance for certain idiosyncratic sounds, a condition suffered by Phoebe Cotton, the protagonist of Kind of Sort of Maybe. The strong negative emotional, physiological and behavioural responses she has to certain sounds make a social life difficult, and a love-life impossible.

Phoebe  Cotton doesn’t dare look for love in case she finds it. If her new romantic partner should make the tiniest noise while sipping coffee or, god forbid, slurp their soup, Phoebe will be helplessly gripped by overwhelming rage and the urgent need to kill or flee.

I haven’t read Imbi Neeme’s debut novel, the 2019 Penguin Literary Prize-winner, The Spill, but Kind of Sort of Maybe is a breezy, light-hearted novel of 20-something shenanigans in the 1990’s; a funny and engaging romance in a time before smartphones, when young people could afford to move out of their parents’ place and rent share-houses together, with all the sex, drugs, parties and hungover mayhem that went with it.

Kind of Sort of Maybe is a mystery of postcards and family secrets, and the Scooby-Doo-like team that form to solve it as they muddle through their own dysfunctional lives to help each other.

In our current, hellish era, a cosy, comforting and humane tale of love and friendship is a welcome respite. If you need that kind of story, Kind of Sort of Maybe…but probably not is on sale from 20 February. Enjoy!

Kind of Sort of Maybe…but Probably Not, by Imbi Neeme, Penguin Books, published 20 February 2024, ISBN: 978 1 76134 106 9

B.P. Marshall is a scriptwriter and author who, against the odds, vaguely recalls some of the 90’s.

Kind of Sort of Maybe, by Imbi Neeme.