Shoes Maketh The Woman: Someone Else’s Shoes By Jojo Moyes

There is no doubt in my mind that shoes are an essential fashion accessory and that they say much about the wearer. When I cleaned my shoes as a girl (Brownie badge in shoe cleaning having been achieved – I kid you not!), I was always made to clean the heels (and the bit underneath) because my mother insisted that the heels mattered as much as the toes and that you could learn a lot about a person by the state of their shoes. At 5 feet 8 inches, I am tall (with size 8 feet), but despite my head already being in the clouds, I have always loved shoes and heels! Power-dressing, interviews, difficult meetings, dressing up, dressing down, always a heel. Wearing trousers, skirts, dresses and ball gowns all required a heel. I confess that now I am not sure how I even stood up in some of them, or pounded the corridors or graced the classroom for whole days. Including slippers, wellies and trainers, a count once revealed 65 pairs – and yes, reader, I wore them all. So, of course I was intrigued by this latest opus from Jojo Moyes – and before you ask, no, I have never owned a pair of Louboutins.

Sam Kemp is only just clinging on to her job, since the snide new manager doesn’t like her despite the deals she brings in. Her husband, who is not working, suffers from depression for which he will not seek treatment, and her teenage daughter is well, a teenager! Sam’s parents need her care and attention but are self-obsessed and oblivious to the fact their daughter is struggling. She is lucky to at least have friends who care. The novel begins when Sam picks up the wrong bag at the gym and finds herself rushing to a re-scheduled meeting which was not in her diary, courtesy of said snide boss, with a Chanel jacket and bright red Louboutin shoes – like nothing she has ever worn before. They belong to Nisha Cantor, a woman who appears to have everything, including an arrogant disregard for fellow human beings. Thus, the metaphor of walking in someone else’s shoes becomes reality.

Wearing Louboutins and a Chanel jacket, and owning the look to broker a deal is not ‘letting down the sisterhood’. You have to ‘use the weapons at your disposal’ and dress ‘from the ground up’. By lunchtime, Sam has discovered the power of designer clothes and Nisha has discovered that her husband is divorcing her and she has been cut off from everything she holds dear: money, ‘friends’, lawyers, even her own clothes, since she is denied access to the penthouse suite in the Bentley Hotel, where she has been living. How quickly circumstances – and attitudes - can change!

cq[At its heart, though, Someone Else’s Shoes is a story of female friendship: women, from different backgrounds, thrust together and looking out for each other.]

Sam’s life actually gets no easier (the gym is suddenly closed for the foreseeable future and she can’t return the bag), and Nisha discovers a very different existence, meeting people who don’t see all friendships as a transaction. She quickly learns a salutary lesson in her desperate search for her shoes since her husband has, for some reason, demanded their return before he will agree to a divorce settlement. They have a very special value - Nisha just doesn’t know it yet. The two women are forced into each other’s spheres of existence and form an unexpected bond.

Moyes makes discreet social comments; the hotel maid in her uniform is invisible to many, not worthy even of a thank you; the single black Mum struggling to make ends meet is desperate to keep her job as a chambermaid but still finds time to help others. Moyes lets us see the heartache depression can cause not just for the sufferer but for the family too. When communication stops, signals are misread, and erroneous conclusions are drawn. At its heart, though, Someone Else’s Shoes is a story of female friendship: women, from different backgrounds, thrust together and looking out for each other. There is also much comment about parent-child relationships in this novel – the offspring don’t have to be children to be hurt by the people who should be looking out for them.

It’s not all doom and gloom, you’ll be pleased to know: as well as feeling their pain, the reader shares a laugh with the characters on occasions (it does become a little far-fetched at one point, but it is a good diversion). There are one or two minor plot twists along the way, not least the inclusion of a tired, menopausal traffic cop called Marjorie, who has been ‘passed by for promotion four times in five years’, and Miriam Price, the gay powerhouse who ultimately empowers Sam. Fortunately, priorities are mostly recognised by the end, there is comeuppance for those who deserve it and a satisfactory conclusion is achieved.

The characters are well drawn and layered in such a way that the reader knows that with each introduction, there is more to come. Sam is shouldering so many burdens yet is losing a sense of her own worth and feels she is invisible to those who should care most. Nisha’s eyes are opened as she struggles with her riches to rags situation: beneath the grit and the brittle façade she has created, there is vulnerability, too, revealed as she comes to appreciate real friends; maybe emotionally, her story is actually, rags to riches, after all. Having just finished her chemo, Andrea is a woman not to be messed with, while Jasmine is a friend to everyone. Then there’s Simon – I can’t bear to think about him – nor Carl. Phil, who I just want to shake, before feeling guilty about my lack of compassion, especially when he eventually reveals more to the therapist, and Joel and Alecks who provide much-needed broad and comforting shoulders. They all come alive on the page and make for a very interesting and varied mix. The locations are just as authentic: Moyes pays attention to detail, creating living spaces which the reader can inhabit with the characters.

This is Moyes’ seventeenth novel. It is not short but it is a quick and compelling read and I cannot believe it’s the first of hers I have come across.