Analysis of Rona Jaffe’s Book, The Room-mating Season

The Room-Mating Season, written by Rona Jaffe, is a novel of supreme quality, as it provokes thought and insists the reader contemplate their beliefs about relationships and their purpose in the world. It engages the reader by inviting them to think about love and how different the meaning is for various people. The Room-Mating Season should be read by every student in high school because it is advanced and includes depth parallel to a captivating plot. It should also be considered as a novel of literary merit because it contains various sentence structures, depth, and meaning that triggers thought and discussion.

Rona Jaffe (1931-2005) was the author of sixteen books. After graduating from the Dalton School at 15 and Radcliffe College four years later, Ms. Jaffe became a file clerk at Fawcett, eventually becoming an associate editor before leaving to write "The Best of Everything," which was on the New York Times best-seller list for five months. She started The Rona Jaffe Foundation in 1995, which presents annual awards to female authors of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. “The Room-Mating Season,” her last book, was published in 2003. Jaffe died of cancer in 2005, at 74 years old.

The Room-Mating Season is a contemporary romance novel, which is a romance novel that is set from 1950 to the present and focuses mainly on a romantic relationship. Most romance novels have a central love story and an optimistic ending. The main plot centers around people falling in ‘love’ and fighting to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel. The lovers who fight for their relationship are rewarded with emotional satisfaction and unconditional love. In the Room-Mating Season three girls fall in ‘love’ and they go through a series of trials and tribulations in the duration of a few decades. They all fight endlessly for their relationships, and by the end of the novel, everyone gets what they want, hence the optimistic ending.

Looking for the perfect man brings three young women together in friendships that last four decades in The Room-Mating Season. Rona Jaffe follows the lives of three women-Leigh, Cady and Vanessa-who meet as roommates in New York City, fresh out of college in 1963. The trio, plus a fourth roommate, Susan, share an Upper East Side townhouse. Leigh aspires to become a casting agent, Cady teaches high school English and Vanessa is an airline stewardess. Susan, a weird receptionist desperate for social life, is disliked by the other three, who eventually ask her to leave. However on the weekend Susan is supposed to move out, she dies in a ‘suicide’. Her death casts a shadow over the next 40 years as Cady and Leigh experience life-altering romances with married men while Vanessa's surprise pregnancy finds her married. Jaffe speeds through these decades, painting a detailed picture of romance and love.

The Room-Mating Season received praise from all fans and professionals, gaining her new fans. Booklist says “Jaffe is wise and witty as ever, and her latest novel will delight her fans--and win her some new ones.” However, with every notable work of literature, there is criticism. Publisher’s Weekly says, “The breezy romances keep the pages turning, but Jaffe's fans may feel that she's working on autopilot.” Apparently, The Room-Mating Season was one of her lesser quality novels. If Rona has published books better than that, it’d be a delight to read.

The Room-Mating Season by Rona Jaffe is a novel that should be considered as literary merit and should be read by students in high school because it delivers an unbiased view towards relationships and offers multiple perspectives of relationships. It forces the reader to open their mind and rethink their opinion on life and love. The Room-Mating Season also contains intensity that makes it hard to put down; it’s a great read that should be expounded upon in the classroom.