Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Hello! I’m back! Both museums I work at are closed in January, so I took the time to travel and visit friends/family. I still did read a lot, so first review of 2018 (what?) is Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. I picked it out on a whim from the new release section of the library.

It is a very contemporary novel that explores the lives of Frances and Bobbi, two college students living in Dublin who used to date and are now just friends. The first sentence describes the moment they meet a woman named Melissa who writes a profile on them and their spoken word poetry, so you know she is going to be important. It goes on to explore the complicated relationships between Frances, Bobbi, Melissa, and Melissa’s husband Nick despite the ~10 year age difference between the group. Something starts up between Frances and Nick via email, while meanwhile Bobbi is infatuated with Melissa. The novel also explores the difficulty between Frances and her divorced parents, and how she navigates this as a penniless college student.

The writing style is very detached and straightforward. Rooney eliminates quotation marks which makes the dialogue seem somehow more instantaneous than if she utilized them. It also makes the novel more of-the-moment, in my opinion. All of the conversations are intelligent and nuanced, and makes one ruminate on what it means to be a friend or girlfriend/boyfriend or wife/husband in the early-21st century. Very relatable. Highly recommend!

Love Letters by Eli Cantor

While I’m still reading the Outlander series (currently on The Fiery Cross), I decided to throw some other books in the mix as a break. So, I started Love Letters by Eli Cantor, which I picked out at the library on a whim. And I loved it. I finished it about an hour ago and it is all I can think about. There is literally almost nothing on the web about it. When I typed it in the search engine a movie came up and I got so hopeful, but of course its based on a play by the same name. And there are a ton of other books by the name.

The entire novel is written through letters–when I told my mom this she quickly corrected me with the smarter word “epistolary,” an adjective meaning written in a series of documents. It was published in 1979, so it is set in that time–before phones and emails and social media made everyone hyperaware of what everyone is doing (side note: why do we care what so-and-so ate for lunch whom we don’t even like?). Both letter writers use a typewriter, which I love.

The premise is that Margaret Webb, a woman in her fifties who lives in New York (which I kind of pictured as the New York of When Harry Met Sally), writes a fan letter to a professor of sociology, Brian Curtiss, in his early thirties living in San Francisco, as a result of an article he wrote disparaging the fringe-religions thriving at the time (which also made me really think about them, and the selfish side to them, which I had never given weight to before). He responds, she responds to his response, and on and on until the two consider themselves quite good friends. Margaret, eventually Maggie to him, finds she can tell him things she has never revealed to anyone before. They discuss anything and everything wich each other through these letters, that go on years and years. Though both are married, have children, live on opposite sides of the country, and are separated by decades, the two eventually fall in love. The struggle that is the crux of the book (which reminded me a little of Loving Frank by Nancy Horan–another great book I highly recommend) is if they can turn from convention, from family, from duty, from respectability and be together and honor their deep love.

I read this in two days and it really struck something in me. The ending is heartbreaking but the story is truly beautiful. It really made me reflect on all kinds of things deeply. A review by Norman Cousins describes an impression much more eloquently than I can: “I have seldom been so moved by a book. It has everything a novel should have–originality; people who lay a claim on your affections; motion; humor; tenderness to the point of gentle aching. I find it difficult to think of any human being whose feelings would not be warmed by these Love Letters. Eli Cantor has written a brilliant novel” (Cousins was Chairman of the Editorial Board of Saturday Review). 

When I read a book as good as this one, it takes me a while to be able to read something else. It is amazing what you can find so randomly–incidentally, my favorite book, Gloria by Keith Maillard, I found in exactly the same way–wandering aimlessly in the library. Both books are out of print, and I find that to be a shame.

The Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown

I fell in love with this book on the cruise! Lately I’ve been reading the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, which is great, but I decided to mix it up for the cruise and found The Light of Paris in my closet, which I had ordered and forgotten about.

The Light of Paris tells the story of Madeleine, who feels trapped in an unhappy marriage with a husband who controls almost every aspect of her life: how she spends her time, what she eats, what she wears, etc. He even refuses to let her paint, which is what has always made her happiest. This is exacerbated by the fact that Madeleine has always felt like a disappointment to her mother, who also has made disparaging comments about her art and weight. She goes home for a visit to escape her life in Chicago for a while and discovers her mother is selling their home. When helping her pack, she stumbles across her grandmother’s diary, who she always thought was conventional and fit into society as seamlessly as a glove. However, upon reading she discovers that her grandmother once lived in Paris, befriended artists, and followed her dream of becoming a writer among the cafes and nightclubs of Paris. Madeleine feels inspired and discovers an artsy, fun side of her hometown that she never knew existed: opposite from the cardigan-wearing, salad-dressing on the side upbringing she had among girls who grew up to be what she saw as perfect. She ultimately uncovers a self and life she had never before imagined, living to the fullest.

I loved this book! It was full of art, food, and exploration of the idea of happiness and what constitutes a life worth living. I could not put it down, and checked out Eleanor Brown’s first book, The Weird Sisters, when I got back. You should definitely add it to your reading list! #artfulliving

Torch by Cheryl Strayed

So, I didn’t think I was going to post again until after the cruise, but since I work Thursday evenings, I’m (mostly) done with grad school apps, and I finished the amazing Torch by Cheryl Strayed, I figured I’d use the time well and write my first book review.

I read and loved Wild by Strayed (before it became a bestseller since it is now a movie starring Reese Witherspoon, thank you very much) and remembered seeing in the back of it that she’d written something else, so checked to see if it was at the (finally opened) downtown library, and it was! While Wild was a memoir, Torch is at least semi-autobiographical in that it describes protagonist Claire’s experience when her mother unexpectedly gets cancer and is told she has a year to live. This is part of what led Strayed to make the decision to hike the PCT, as told in Wild. In fact, I kind of saw it as the preface to Wild. Torch is set in fictional small town Midden and details the grief and coming-to-grips experience of Claire, her brother Joshua, and their stepdad Bruce upon mother and wife Teresa’s diagnosis of advanced cancer.

One of things I loved about Wild is the rich way Strayed represents the characters. It is similar in Torch–I really felt like I knew these people. It is such a unique story, as Strayed was raised and subsequently lived so unconventionally. She is such an interesting person, and that really comes across in this book. Personally, I would love to meet her.

The mother, Teresa, is an amazing figure. She got pregnant as a teenager and left the abusive father, fleeing where he could never find them. After first working at a retirement home, she ultimately finds a job waitressing and lives in an apartment above the bar with her children. Teresa then falls in love with carpenter Bruce; neither believe in marriage, so they wed by throwing branches into a river to symbolize their commitment (which I thought was so cool!). She also runs a radio show entitled Modern Pioneers that describes her life on a farm with her family. She is a vegetarian and only lets her children eat meat if they butcher it themselves (as a mostly vegetarian, I identified with this).

Beyond the relationship each main character has with Teresa and their emotional journey, you really get a sense of the character of the town and its inhabitants. The town is almost like a character in itself. Overall, it is an honest, captivating, haunting, and singularly unique tale that will stick with you–one of the best books I’ve read in a while (and I read a lot).

Next time you’re looking for a good read, you should check this out (whether online or in a library). (Sorry). More book reviews to come after the cruise! I packed eight books, which caused my boyfriend to tell me I am a certified nut. #sorrynotsorry #abookadaykeepsthedoctoraway?

#artfulliving