by anneMoore on July 15, 2010
Quite a ways into this story, someone at a party asks Emma how she met Dex. “We grew up together.”
Their growing up and getting old (er) after university is the story of this charming book, which is laugh-out-loud funny and, at times, gut-wrenchingly sad. It’s not so much chick lit as Jane Austen on fast-forward, with a true beginning, middle and end — plus a few weddings. A huge hit in England, the book is newly published in the U.S. Movie in the works: Anne Hathaway to star.
Author David Nicholls gives us Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, who are both very, very right and very, very wrong for each other. Nicholls’ great achievement — and the feat that got me to pick up the book — is keeping the lovers apart but still interested, and interesting, for 20 years.
Yup. Two decades. In other words, pale blue air mail to hand-held texts.
Emma and Dex never bored me; some of their lovers, or situations did. They’re smart, witty people thrown together again and again — and the reasons they don’t stay together make perfect sense. After one particularly awful evening, Emma says, “I love you so much. So, so much….I just don’t like you anymore. I’m sorry.”
Emma is rigid, brainy, and holds people to an impossible standard. She over-thinks everything. It’s shocking when she tears off her clothes to join Dex skinny-dipping. Dexter is a pretty party boy who travels the world (misplacing love letters to Emma) then lands a career in television. He becomes famous. Drinking, drugs, women: he’s blissed out on himself, happy to try it all.
Secondary characters surprise; Dexter’s father provides a model of stern, unflappable love.
The “One Day” of the title is today, July 15, St. Swithin’s Day. Fitting that it’s a summer day; this book is a perfect summer read. Full bodied, funny, real. If you bring it to the beach, say you got sand in your eye when they catch you crying.
by anneMoore on July 9, 2010
My friend Jennifer and I beat the heat the other day and ducked in to a movie theater for a matinee. We’d both read tantalizing reviews of “I am Love” and couldn’t wait to see it.
We weren’t disappointed. Movies like this don’t get made any more: beautifully filmed, slowly told, it was like watching an exquisite book unfold. (From its inception, the film was ten years in the making. Produced by Tilda Swinton, its star. Luca Guadagnino directed.)
Set in present-day Milan, the story concerns the Recchi family, wealthy textile manufacturers. It opens with a birthday celebration for the patriarch, Edoardo, a bully who diminishes his son, Tancredi, by ceding the company to him and grandson Edo. It’s a wonderful set up, but, like much of the action in this film, receives little follow -through. Indeed, the heart of this story opens up gradually, with the growing desire between Emma (Tancredi’s wife, played by Tilda Swinton) and Antonio, a brilliant chef befriended by Edo. Their torrid affair begins with food. Indeed, food is the story’s catalyst: food seduces, food betrays.
Too many themes — passion, duty, guilt, family, class, sexual orientation, displacement, inclusion, globalization — are served up, then left unresolved. We discussed our quibbles later; during the movie we were completely absorbed by its leisurely pace, the on and off use of color, the architecture and homes in Milan, the glories of the nearby mountains, the stirring score. Beautiful actors and actresses — especially Tilda Swinton, who is luminous, and ferocious — kept us glued, too.
The climax shocks; neither of us saw it coming. I looked around at the other patrons and saw that they were stunned, too. No one moved to leave. (This would be a terrific outing for a book club. So much to discuss!)
See this film. See it on the big screen. (Warning: It’s two hours, and feels longer.) Don’t leave when the credits roll. There’s one last shot of the lovers that suggests what they’ve become.
by anneMoore on June 21, 2010
My 17 -year-old son read Virgil’s “Aeneid” this year at school. I couldn’t hide my envy: to be so advanced in the study of Latin that he and his classmates could read that ancient tale of arms and men. What a gift their hard work brought them!
During the year, two works of fiction were published, each offering fresh takes on characters from Troy. I read and loved “The Lost Books of the Odyssey” by Zachary Mason. Now I’ve gotten to “Ransom” by David Malouf.
At first I wondered why I was reading, again, about Achilles’ wrath, his love and grief for Patroclus, Hector’s death and the gruesome dragging of his body around the walls of Troy.
But once Malouf introduces Priam, and the ransom he dares to deliver, the story takes off and unfolds in surprising ways. We learn of a nightmarish event in Priam’s childhood, when he was plucked by his sister from certain slavery. We find Patroclus as a murderous boy, taken in by Achilles’ father. Cassandra quiet, numbed by the deaths she foretold. We discover the everyday life, and worries, of a Trojan carter. We see Achilles with the body of Hector, which remains fresh.
It has been eleven days since Hector was slain. Priam is King of Troy and Hector’s father. He goes to Hector’s mother, Hecuba, and describes his plan to travel to the Greek camp, appeal to Achilles as a man, and offer treasure — a ransom — for the return of their son. Priam will travel unadorned, on a hard cart pulled by mules. Priam will present himself as father instead of king.
The journey reveals the man. Priam arrives — with the help of the gods — in the Greek camp. Achilles mistakes Priam for his own aged father and, undone by that ghostly vision, treats Priam kindly, feeding him and setting him in a soft bed. These scenes are tender, and heartbreaking: a father fed and cared for by his son’s slayer.
In the original text, this ransom is mentioned in a few lines. Malouf takes that moment and opens it up, creating a character who discovers his humanity in the enemy’s embrace. This is a lovely read.
by anneMoore on May 19, 2010
Dan Chaon’s “Await Your Reply” (2009) is a beautifully told and highly compelling tale about identity: losing one, stealing others, gaining another (and another, and another). It’s rare that I finish a book and want to start reading it again, to figure out how the author pulled off such a clever feat of storytelling.
This book haunts.
Chaon gives us three narratives that eventually merge. We first meet college student Ryan as he’s losing consciousness, comforted by his father. Ryan’s hand has just been sliced off by some thugs. Next, we meet Lucy Lattimore, who has ditched her small-town life in Ohio with George Orson, her high school history teacher. Miles Cheshire is the third leg; he’s on a quixotic drive to the Arctic Circle in search of his identical twin, Hayden, who’s clinically insane. (It’s a 4,000 mile drive: who’s the crazy one?)
I was hooked by all three but I confess a fondness for Lucy, a dumpy orphan who blossoms under the tutelage of her older, wiser lover. Theirs is the most Gothic of the three stories: George takes her to his family’s home, a Victorian house beside a shuttered motel, on the banks of a dried-up lake. There he hides himself in the study, with computers and a wall safe. Lucy, like any out-of-place teenager, watches t. v. and eats poorly. Even she gets bored with that routine. When George leaves her alone too long, she has to snoop — and what she finds in the safe turns her into a player.
It’s a dangerous game.
I liked Chaon’s first novel, “You Remind Me of Me” (2005) but had a hard time recommending it because it was so sad. In it, a young man whose face was scarred by the family’s dog sets off to find his brother, who was given up for adoption as an infant. The scarred brother has spent his whole life with the mother who regrets her decision. Beautifully written, but heart wrenching.
“Await Your Reply” will find a larger audience. It’s not a thriller, but its characters will keep you in their grip.
by anneMoore on May 10, 2010
With less than a week in Paris, we foodies needed to plan our meals well. Haute cuisine, “le fooding,” brasseries, bistros, Middle Eastern, Moroccan: how to get a taste of it all?
We didn’t, but here’s three we’d go to again:
Gaya par Pierre Gagnaire (44, rue du Bac). Don’t be put off by Gagnaire’s global celebrity. This spot is small, charming, hip and well run. Its kitchen puts out exquisite food at prices befitting the seasonality and execution of each dish. One could quibble over three ravioli for 20 euros, but I didn’t: each was filled with a different spring vegetable, and melted in my mouth. A Lac Leman whitefish filet ( 33 euros) was sided with a timbale of white beans and olives. Yum. One complaint: nearly an hour passed before dessert and coffee arrived.
We tried another feted chef’s affordable offerings at Atelier Maitre Albert (1, rue Maitre Albert), a Guy Savoy restaurant. Back home we’re still talking about the luscious soupe de moules, plank-grilled cabillaud, terrine de pamplemousse. We liked the old stone walls and dark but pleasing decor…also our cute, attentive waiter. (A prix fixe dinner is 32 euros.)
The others returned to Chicago but my friend Cathy and I had another day and night for art (Musee Rodin), shopping (Le Bon Marche, Dehillerin) and food. We both had a jones for mussels — not soupe de moules — just a bowl of meaty ones, steamed in white wine, shallots, parsley.
La Coupole (102, bd du Montparnasse) is known for its spectacular decor, seafood and excellent service. We got all three — but no mussels. Never mind: what a blast to dine at La Coupole! The room is vast and too brightly lit, but our table seemed intimate. There’s a constant cacophony, but we had not trouble conversing. It was a weeknight but completely packed with families, couples, old ladies.
Our meal was just right for a last night in Paris: a platter of oysters, salade fromage de chevre, foie gras, a grassy Chablis. (About 130 euros.)
by anneMoore on May 3, 2010
Six of us went to Paris last week to eat and shop and look at art. We had no trouble (volcanic ash) coming or going, and while we certainly didn’t plan to benefit from other travelers’ canceled plans, we found it easy to nab reservations at top restaurants, and lines at museums were remarkably short. Given the Greek debt crisis, Parisian salespeople could not have been more lovely.
First new find: Bert’s (4 avenue du president Wilson, and other locations in Paris). Coffees, pastries, sandwiches, salads all freshly made and reasonably priced, served up in a fashionably hip, dark wood setting. Une grande boisson chaude, un jus de fruits frais, un viennoiserie for 5.7 euros? A steal, especially in that neighborhood.
Le petit dejeuner a Carette
Another breakfast spot we loved: Carette, 4 place de Trocadero (also at Place des Vosges.) As we stood trying to decide among three spots an older Frenchman passed and said, of Carette: “C’est la meilleure patisserie a Paris.” Sold! We settled into a corner booth and ordered cafe creme, scrambled eggs (soupy: our one gripe), croissants, toasted baguettes. Wonderful service, reasonable prices.
One day for lunch we wandered into St.-Germain-des-Pres. So many places to eat! But one is blessed with sun: the terrace at Les Deux Magots (6 place Saint-Germain-des-Pres). Did we dare? Picasso ate there; so did Hemingway. We feared we’d be eating tourist slop. But the menu looked promising (selection, prices) and a sun-splashed table beckoned.
For our daring we received a perfect lunch in the sun served by a charming, attentive waiter. Fresh, lightly dressed salads, fluffy quiche, warm crusty bread. Adorable honeymooners, also from Chicago, but mostly locals; when Parisians eat at a famous place, it must be good.
Next post: our dinners in Paris.
by anneMoore on April 19, 2010
Some tales could only come to life — and make sense — in a particular time and place.
In I.B. Singer’s “Enemies, A Love Story” Jewish refugee Herman Broder makes a home in Coney Island with his pregnant wife Yadwiga, who’s a Gentile. In the Bronx, he keeps his ravishing mistress, Masha, and her devout mother, Shifrah Puah. On the Lower East Side, Herman’s first wife Tamara shows up, seemingly risen from the dead; she’d been shot but not killed by the Nazis who took their young children.
Herman supports these women writing sermons, books and speeches for a world-famous rabbi. He’s not fooling himself: he is “a fraud, a transgressor — a hypocrite, too. The sermons he wrote for Rabbi Lampert were a disgrace and a mockery.”
At any other time in modern history, Herman would be a schmuck. But his situation makes sense: he stays with Yadwiga because she saved his life in Poland, hiding him in a hayloft at her family’s farm. He can’t live without Masha, so when she insists on marriage, he does, in a Jewish ceremony. Tamara won’t divorce him.
The situation sounds like a comedy but their lives are suffused with tragedy. Herman rises with a bruised forehead, dreaming the Nazis are bayoneting him in the hayloft. The dead speak to Masha when she sleeps; she wakes Herman to show him, again and again, the scars on her body. Yadwiga is still terrified by the journey to America; she won’t ride the subway, look at the ocean or walk farther than a few blocks. Tamara isn’t attracted to Herman anymore but they shared a life; they had children, whom they mourn.
How it all plays out is unexpectedly moving.
Herman’s tangled romances feed the plot; his inner thoughts provide the texture, scenery and black humor that make this book such a rich read. To Herman, the dreary Bronx street where Masha lives “couldn’t make up its mind whether to remain part of the neighborhood or to give up and disappear.” When he first sees Tamara again, he notes her American clothes and bright makeup “like a stale loaf of bread put in a hot oven to be freshened up.” Nazis haunt his every meal, even on vacation. “Somewhere on this lovely summer morning, fowl were being slaughtered; Treblinka was everywhere.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.
by anneMoore on April 7, 2010
Why do we read books that puzzle and confound?
Earlier this week I was fortunate to join in a book club’s discussion of Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland. I hadn’t talked about a difficult read, at length, with a group of smart, educated women since I was in college. Such interesting talking points: Does it matter if a character is unknowable? Unlikeable? If there’s a plot? If we know the story’s end at its beginning?
When we couldn’t agree on the book’s subject — alienation? immigration? colonialism? a marriage? — the hostess (thank you) piped up. She liked the “business” of the book we were discussing, but pined for a structured read with a character-driven plot. Such as? “Jane Austen.”
I enjoy difficult reads, but I also welcome and sometimes deeply need an Austen-like read, where there’s a problem, or three, worked out in a pleasing way that sometimes ends with a marriage. “Or two marriages,” a book club member observed.
This is a long way to recommending Cathleen Shine’s The Three Weissmans of Westport. Using Austen’s Sense and Sensibility as a frame, Shine provides a smart, funny, satisfying read about two adult sisters who move with their elderly mother, newly divorced and homeless, to a Connecticut cottage. They’re all New Yorkers, so the dislocation from fabulous lifelong digs on Central Park West, to the suburban seaside, is a hilarious jolt.
They’re a recognizable but nutty bunch. Instead of divorce, the mom pretends she’s widowed; after all, she is mourning a marriage. Sister Miranda falls in love with … her lover’s toddler son! Sister Annie frets over their collective spending (they have no money!) and her puzzling on-again, off-again romance with a famous writer.
Sure, it’s Austen’s set up, but Shine unravels the story in new, fresh, witty ways. I laughed out loud, on a city bus, reading it. Best of all, the book ends with a funeral that’s as good as a wedding.
A delightful read.
by anneMoore on March 25, 2010
More book grief. Zachary Mason’s “The Lost Books of the Odyssey” is that rare thing: a retelling of a classic that holds you in its grip just as the original did. Will Odysseus survive the war? Will he finally return home to Ithaca? Will Penelope be waiting?
Mason offers alternate tellings and endings for the Trojan War and Odysseus’ life. Achilles is “reborn” in clay, and continues his ruthless fighting. Odysseus never goes home. Penelope marries another. Penelope is dead. Ithaca is abandoned. Revisiting Troy, Odysseus finds a carnival town for tourists, his shield remade as a cheap souvenir.
I found myself weeping, more than once, while reading these tales. Incredible, to be moved again and again by these characters! Credit Mason, who is never glib or jokey. His tone is majestic, befitting these great ancient tales. I easily bought into the book’s conceit: because “The Odyssey” was from an oral tradition, there were many other tellings and retellings, additions, subtractions. This novel is those “lost” and now found books.
And in this age of Kindle, I particularly enjoyed holding this book in my hands, tucking it into my bag. It’s tiny: short and thin, with a white paper cover that features a warrior etched in red and black lettering mixed with silver discs, for the words’ O’s. While I was reading it other people wanted to touch it, or picked it up when I’d put it down.
With so many wondrous tales retold, this story could go on and on and on. I was sorry to come to its end.
by anneMoore on March 15, 2010
Can a book be grieved? It’s not a person, after all, or a beloved pet, or a plant you’ve cared for and coaxed into bloom each spring. It’s a book.
I’ve said before that books are like lovers. Private companions. We take them to bed, tuck them into our bags, panic (as I did) when we misplace a book pages from its conclusion.
The object of my grief? Russell Banks “The Darling” (2004). Hannah Musgrave is a 60ish hippie farmer who returns to Africa to find the body of her husband and the fate of their three young sons.
Hello? Why is a counterculture WASP who clings to her Puritan roots sneaking into Liberia in the back of a flatbed, under a tarp?
The answer to that question is the story of the book, and in Banks’ hands it is a deliciously slow, steady, surprising read.
It’s a discomfiting tale. Hannah is variously cold, uncaring, willfully blind, criminal, proud, foolish, naive, mean, generous, racist, sexist. Also, an adulterer, and a thief. Her husband is a high-level functionary in a corrupt African government; it is he who calls her Hannah, darling.
Like the characters in Banks’ “The Book of Jamaica” (1980) and “Continental Drift “(1985), Hannah is the American dreamer who loses herself in a foreign place, with tragic consequences.
As with all Banks’ work, this is a story of place. He weaves Liberia’s fantastic past into the story’s present, where the nation and its decorous capital turn from civility to savagery.
I didn’t especially like Hannah — she trades a false American existence for a hollow wifely life in Africa — but I understood her choices. At its close, I felt like I’d lost a difficult but treasured friend, one whose life was more varied, and more foolish.
