46 pages • 1 hour read
The Idea of You
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Authorial Context: Robinne Lee
Robinne Lee is a successful American writer, actor, and producer. Born in New York in 1974 to Jamaican parents of African, Chinese, and British descent, she was educated at Yale University and Columbia Law School. Lee has previously worked for Elle Magazine’s youth culture title in New York and Paris, and she ran a music management company for a number of years. Her first major acting credit was in the 1997 independent film, Hav Plenty. She then went on to act in the hit films National Security, Deliver Us From Eva, Hitch, and Seven Pounds.
Lee now lives in Los Angeles and has travelled widely for both work and leisure, inspiring the varied locations in her novel. Embedded in the publishing, music, and film industries, Lee was able to draw on insider experience to inform the setting and themes of her novel—including fame, its benefits and drawbacks, the globalized media, and the role and treatment of women in the public eye. Lee regularly speaks and writes on the roles of women and actors of color in the film and music industry and is a public advocate.
Lee has also spoken of the importance of women’s literature—including in the romance genre—and the ways women’s literature is still diminished by society when compared to fiction written for and/or by men: “We take art that appeals to women—films, books, music—and we undervalue it. We assume it can’t be high art” (“The Sleeper Hit of the Pandemic? A Three-Year-Old Romance Novel Inspired by Harry Styles” Lee, Robinne, interviewed by Ruiz, Michelle, Vogue, December 2020). Robinne’s comments illuminate her approach and motivations in writing and her treatment of her female protagonist, popular music, and Hayes’s predominantly female fanbase. Lee gives her main character similar aspirations, as Solène provides opportunities for contemporary women artists and artists of color.
Genre Context: Contemporary Romance
The origins of the romance novel can be traced to the 18th and 19th centuries, drawing on Romantic poetry, fairy tales, and earlier romance traditions such as Arthurian literature. These early romance novels focused on female protagonists who struggle through various conflicts before finding their happily ever after in the form of a romantic relationship. They were generally written for a female audience and sometimes by a female author and—as such—were generally dismissed by the patriarchal literary tradition as being a lesser form of writing. Contemporary romance novels are defined as those written after the end of World War II and are primarily set in the present. As a result, contemporary romance novels are characterized by the development of realistic protagonists and situations that are recognizable to a modern audience. This realistic portrayal of a protagonist and their life is often created by elaborating on the other elements of their lived experience beyond their romantic connections.
Romance novels of the past were varied in their form and structure, drawing on first-person and third-person narratives or epistolary forms, and contemporary romance novels often reflect this tradition by drawing on a number of narrative structures and voices. Lee includes transcripts from Solène and Hayes’s text messages as a means of contemporizing the epistolatory form and breaking up the first-person voice of Solène that dominates the novel.
Romantic fiction generally relies on the romantic potential of two people who are kept apart by circumstances for momentum; the plot will ultimately have either a happy or tragic ending, depending on whether these obstacles can be successfully overcome. Bound up in this momentum is a trajectory of personal self-growth that can inform a happy ending or compensate emotionally for the failure of the romantic relationship—as is the case with Solène and Hayes. Modern romance novels often explore and subvert the generic ideas of the “happy” and “sad” ending. In this way, authors like Robinne Lee examine the complex demands of modern-day life—especially as they relate to women— and how these can affect an individual’s search for true human connection and fulfilment.
As protagonists, Solène and Hayes grapple with their realistic struggles around age, career, family, and social expectation. Through her portrayal of Solène and Hayes’s love story, Lee discusses social complications of love interests for middle-aged, divorced women with children, and combines this with the taboo of a significant age gap and the pressure of a celebrity lifestyle. Solène and Hayes partly express their emotional intelligence through Hayes’s music and Solène’s love of art, drawing on romance tropes.
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