Maggie Armstrong has described an “Old Romantic” as “a damn hapless fool who continually authors their own destruction by way of repeated mistakes and self-delusion.” While that may be a lovingly stern assessment of a romantic, like a woman talking to her naive best-friend, Armstrong argues her case in Old Romantics, because, well, you haven’t met Margaret.
Snapshots of Margaret’s life from young womanhood to middle-age, Old Romantics brilliantly oscillates between a focus on the inner world of a flawed woman’s personal journey through the land of modern romance and a spitting commentary on what it even means to be a wife, mother, and woman in the 21st century.
Margaret debuts as a young woman cycling through fraught relationships whilst working her first internship out of college. It is in these first few short stories (“Number One,” “The Dublin Marriage,” “All The Boys,” and “Old Romantics”) that the foundations for Margaret’s perspective and expectations for the men in her life are formed. These men aren’t pure evil, but their sheer ineptitude and selfishness, as well as Margaret’s willingness to nurture, care for, and forgive these men time and time again is hard to even fathom at some points, which, be warned, leaves us with the urge to hurl the book across a room at high speeds. She learns from her young beaus that expectations for men in her world are low, and should stay that way, demonstrating Armstrong’s razor-sharp ability to weave commentary and at points scathing personal critique into narratives that seem both impossibly unhinged and painfully realistic.
Halfway through, Margaret’s story takes a turn when her rose colored glasses are ripped off by an on again off again relationship that puts her in direct danger when he drives recklessly while intoxicated, her foray into the “real world,” before satisfyingly breaking up with him for good in “Baked Alaska.” From there we meet Sergio, the man with whom she falls in love (for real this time), has children, and experiences the disillusionment of motherhood and the wifely duties that fall into her routine. These stories (“Trouble,” “Maternity Benefit,” and “Trouble Again”) take a more serious tone while Margaret clings to writing and literature as her lifeline as her marriage crumbles, but sarcastic humor is still woven through a saga of Margaret buying heaps of maternity and baby clothes to prepare for her pregnancy before writing a scathing review of the birthing experience afterwards.
Margaret’s desire for love and romance is her guiding principle throughout the collection, leading her down the frightening and entertaining path of self pitying literary sad-boys and “attractive enough” charlatans. Margaret herself, obviously, is by far the most fascinating character. Armstrong is unafraid to show sides of Margaret that we wouldn’t typically see in a book that seems, from the cover, a romance. A privileged young woman, Margaret lives seemingly in two worlds, where her thoughts live completely separate from her actions, moving through life as she thinks she ought to in a fight against her better judgement. She devotes herself entirely to the men she is involved with. When things don’t go the way she thinks she’s entitled to, we get a strange picture of a woman helplessly catering and endlessly self-interested. Armstrong pulls us through these painfully embarrassing hook-ups, lovers quarrels, and literary references as herself, Margaret, and the reader—expecting us to keep up the pace. For those who have lived as Margaret, experienced snippets of her life, been enraged with “real world” jobs, relationships, and money, can we even blame her? Honestly, probably. But I don’t think anyone can’t relate to the picture that Armstrong creates of modern life, even if some of it is devastatingly disappointing.
Old Romantics, while rooted in its status as fiction, provides bite-sized self-reflections sprinkled with sharp wit and offers a clearly refreshing and knowledgeable voice to the cacophony of authors writing about modern romance, a feat one might consider recklessly romantic in its own right. For anyone that can see the beauty and humor in that, the short stories presented in Old Romantics successfully cleanses the palate, even if its reality makes us wince.
Old Romantics, by Maggie Armstrong. Windsor, Ontario, Canada: Biblioasis, April 2025. 272 pages. $18.95, paper.
Greta John is an associate editor for the Red Coyote. During the school year, she balances work and university with being a full time bookworm.
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