The Best of Friends and The Men and The Girls by Joanna Trollope

I'm reading another one of the books floating around: The Best of Friends by Joanna Trollope. I read The Men and the Girls, also by Trollope, last year, but never got around to blogging about it.

I'm about 20% in, and my opinion of Trollope is undergoing a shift. I had thought of Trollope as a writer who liked to stand cliches on their head; in this novel she seems to be exploring a problem that does not begin as an exploded cliche.

Trollope has a website, by the way, and from it I learned that she's been named to the panel for the Orange Prize ("Celebrating excellence, innovation and accessibility, it is the UK’s most prestigious annual book award for international fiction written by a woman."). A new book is coming out in February or March: The Soldier's Wife. And, again, according to her website, she's one of six novelists that has been asked to "rework" the novels of Jane Austen (hers is Sense and Sensibility). Since I sense no decrease in interest in Austen, I bet the book will be successful and more folks will discover Trollope.

According to Wikipedia, Trollope is a fifth-generation niece of the great Victorian novelist, Anthony Trollope.

Another amusing bit of trivia about her is that, according to this article in the Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/feb/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview10, she has been dubbed Queen of the Aga Saga but she protests that she's mentioned an Aga in only two of her novels. The Men and The Girls is one of them; Julia has an Aga.  And Julia would have an Aga:  not because the Aga is so expensive but because it's the best.  Julia's gift, and her affliction, may be that she is attractive, an excellent manager, one of those people who's good at everything -- except, perhaps, understanding the anguish of the mere mortals among us.  However that may be, her strength is important to her husband and her family in the crisis that occurs in the novel.

In The Best of Friends Hilary finds out, after agreeing to marry Laurence, that his best friend is a woman, Gina. Twenty years later, this friendship becomes problematic when Fergus, Gina's husband, suddenly leaves Gina and Gina, bereft, becomes a burden to Hilary and Laurence in her state of collapse.

As I read this novel I really enjoyed bits of psychological insight Trollope offers. When Gina confesses to her mother that she knows her own daughter, Sophy, blames Gina for the collapse of her marriage and is afraid to talk to Sophy because she can't bear being confronted by her anger, her mother Vi says, "You've got to do something to show her that you care."

On the whole, however, I preferred The Men and the Girls, with its cast of really improbable characters. James meets Kate at a bar when his friend, Hugh, accidentally spills beer on her. James and Kate start to go out and and two months later, Kate moves in. Kate is deliriously happy and seems not to notice or ever think about their 20-year age difference. But Kate refuses to marry James.

Hugh, James' lifelong friend, is married to a woman a little younger than Kate; Hugh and Julia met at work and Julia, Hugh's wife, seems never to have even noticed their age difference. She's an attractive, confident woman who's mapped out a life with Hugh, children, and a tastefully decorated antique house.

And then, as they say, it all goes pear-shaped. When James tells Kate that he's struck a woman on a bicycle with his car, Kate snaps, "You stupid old man," and horribly, really means it, I think. Soon James becomes taken, almost infatuated, with the woman he hit.  Miss Batchelor, his victim, is a bright, educated, lonely and impoverished woman -- older than James -- who enjoys both James' company and all the attention that follows, in a clear-eyed way.

Kate becomes jealous and moves out, leaving her daughter (not James' child) behind, and she misses her daughter, painfully. James misses Kate, and he, his elderly uncle, Leonard, his old friend Hugh, and Joss, Kate's daughter, make up a lively and delightfully mismatched menagerie, with frequent visits from Oxford spinster Miss Batchelor and later, visits from a homesick American academic wife who falls in love with James.

Both novels have slightly surprising, not entirely happy endings in which some people have to Be Brave and Get On With It.

Trollope seems to take cliched ideas -- in this case, older men married to younger women -- and turn the cliches of our thinking about these inside out and on their head. Of course, I like that sort of thing.

But I find myself feeling still confused about certain things: how can it be that Kate could fall in love with James, and Julia with Hugh, without ever thinking about the age difference? How could Laurence have a woman as his best friend for years without trying to make it something more? James is described as someone who has not made any effort to look younger, and yet he engenders love in two women and perhaps a kind of fascination, or at least enthusiasm, in Miss Batchelor. What is James' secret? And what drew him to Kate after several years of relatively contented widowerhood? I understood that Kate's feelings about James changed, but I never quite understood why.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding

I was more than two thirds of the way through this novel when, as Bridget contemplated Kipling's advice in If, I realized I'd read it before. That makes it just the fourth novel I've ever read twice in my life, along with Madame Bovary, At Swim Two Birds and Persuasion. Hmmm.

I did love laughing out loud, e.g., "Sunday 31 August - 114 lbs. (Yess! Yess! Triumphant culmination of 18-year diet, though perhaps at unwarranted cost) .." (after Bridget has spent two weeks in a Thai prison).

I enjoyed the many allusions to Persuasion, from Rebecca insisting on throwing herself off a bridge, to Rebecca ending up recuperating with, and engaged to Giles Benwick, to Darcy suggesting to Bridget that she ought to take an umbrella to Thailand. And I love Fielding's style of humor -- I suppose I love the mashup of low and high culture and the abrupt juxtapositions of Bridget's insecurity on the one hand and her rather incisive sarcasm on the other.

Go Dog Go by P.D. Eastman

It's Christmas, and I'm thinking about children's books. Go, Dog, Go is my absolute favorite children's book. There's something dynamic and anarchic about the differently colored dogs (coral, green, blue and yellow) and their cars and especially, their hats. I like a nice hat!

Incendies/Something Borrowed/Everything Must Go

My own personal film festival: I could not finish watching Incendies because it was too graphic for me. I found it unbearable to watch; the violence started very early in the film. I thought it seemed very realistic and that the acting was sublime, completely convincing.

Here's some background (from the Wikipedia entry for Indendies): Incendies is a 2010 Quebec film written and directed by Denis Villeneuve. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's play, Scorched, Incendies follows the journey of twin brother and sister as they attempt to unravel the mystery of their mother's life. The film premiered at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in September 2010 and was released in Quebec on 17 September 2010. In 2011, it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Something Borrowed is a romantic comedy based on the novel by the same name by Emily Giffin. (I've never read a novel by Emily Giffin but I've read that infidelity is a theme in her work.) This story is about unfaithfuless among friends and how growth and change can lead to unfaithfullness, ironically. I seem to recall one review that I read that found it uninspired and I can understand that, but I actually felt differently about it. It had some quality of underdevelopment but I thought that the acting was good and that the issue of how changing may lead one to do something that leaves one's friends behind or in some other way seems to break faith with friends or the priorities of the past was actually a serious topic for folks in that time of life.

Everything Must Go was a comedy without laughs. That's not really true, but the laughs were few and subtle. This movie was really a drama. It was based on a short story by Raymond Carver who was a serious drinker and wrote about the difficulty of being adult when addicted in many of his stories. Of course, it's difficult to be an adult even when you're not addicted. See above, re: keeping faith.

July is a tough month: The Happiness Project

I'm on July in the Happiness Project - in fact, I've just finished it. July was a hard month for Gretchen Rubin; she was in a bad mood and everyone in her family was in a bad mood. She thought consciously about the resolutions she'd set for herself to handle parenting and family conflict issues -- and the tools she'd developed for coping with these issues - and she just ignored them. That's a very familiar feeling .. she recovered. But it shows that there are difficulties, even limits, to acquiring new behavior patterns, something any dieter could tell you.

In August she decides to read catastrophe memoirs, in part because they lend a true sense of perspective to an ordinarily very fortunate life. She also talks about giving something up: as counterintuitive as that seems, giving something up seems to also foster happiness. She also suggests imitating a spiritual master. This is one of the places in the book where she reprints posts made on her blog by followers. Some of what they said about the spiritual masters who informed their thinking was surprising and fun - Viktor Frankl was an obvious choice but Dan Savage, the sex columnist, was another surprising choice.

One day her husband asks her just how many books about Therese of Lisieux she's going to read, and after counting how many she already owns (17 plus) she realizes that St. Therese, the Little Flower, is the spiritual master she has been most influenced by and in fact has greatly, if indirectly, influenced her concept for her personal happiness project: one that will take place "in situ," that is, without disrupting her work or her family life and one that will emphasize small but meaningful changes that will be almost entirely internal.

By this time, I find myself feeling a grudging respect for Gretchen Rubin. I'm not going to read St. Therese's memoir, but I do see how it's a kind of blueprint for Rubin's own Happiness Project and how it may have influenced her to want to make a happiness project.

Rubin seems to me to be clearly not the sort of person who might have written Jesus and the Weather as a young person. But her candor in assessing the strengths, success and failure of her personal happiness project is charming.

A week or two ago, I found myself thinking, Rubin reminds me of Ann Landers. That notion seems surprising, but there is a similar quality of acceptance and practicality in both authors.

For instance, Rubin doesn't try to pretend that money isn't linked to happiness. One wants to be equal to one's peers and, she writes, relative wealth is not as important as having approximately what one's peers have. Money can't buy you happiness but it can solve some problems that, by being resolved, can promote happiness. She's forthright about the fact that acquiring things can make you feel good (she says because that feeling of gaining something feels like the growth that, it turns out, is a very important component in happiness).

She emphasizes having fun several times, and talks about different ways of having fun. She points out very importantly, that different people have fun different ways and it doesn't count as fun if it's not something you enjoy - even if you think that you should.

In September, Rubin wrote a novel. I found this amazing. It required such a large commitment of time, but she did it anyway (fast, no editing). She undertook this big project in the midst of the big project of the Happiness Project in the midst of her busy life as wife, mother, blogger.

To anyone, I would recommend reading the February chapter, in which she talks the small, practical steps she takes as part of improving her relationship with her husband. Part of her project is a "Week of Extreme Nice". It doesn't sound grand, does it (but a little intriguing, no?). The point is this: it's not really complicated; anyone can do it; it works and it's a fine illustration of how you can improve the emotional tenor of your life using the kind of tools Rubin uses: make a plan and implement it. (I have to say that making plans, implementing them, and evaluating the implementation is a big part of what she does; although the very idea of doing that, the way that she does it, doesn't really appeal to me, the results do.)

She's wonderfully practical. She begins her Happiness Project, in January, by resolving to go to bed earlier, and by cleaning out closets. Many people cannot begin something new unless they've uncluttered their mind by uncluttering their closets. It's not romantic, or dramatic, but it's effective.

Having finished the book, I have to say that it contains a lot of wisdom about how we should live now. I also have to say that it was a bit of a slog, and I consider that a problem. I wonder if finding another way to organize the experiences would have been better.

Another problem that I see is that using the diary like structure, arranged in months, was terribly clunky. It seemed to me that although Rubin experienced growth, and had tons of wisdom to share, she didn't quite succeed in making her experience into a shapely story.

And her quotations - Rubin loves quotations and she peppers her prose with them. I think it slows down the action. I also think it creates interest but it's overused. Rubin seems to me to be both a discreet and honest writer, which stands in the way of shaping an exciting narrative.

And I think it's a challenge for someone as attuned to modest virtues as Gretchen Rubin, someone who admires Dr. Johnson and Therese of Lisieux as much as she does, to write a narrative as entertaining as, say, Blood, Bones and Butter (by Gabrielle Hamilton). Rubin wouldn't make, I'd guess, the same choices as Hamilton. While both authors are good writers, the choices that Hamilton did make, good, bad, and indifferent, provide the narrative drive and spice of her account. She gets angry, and has snarky, sarcastic, critical and contemptuous thoughts, which she shares with us and we enjoy them and perhaps also enjoy some vicarious thrill. Rubin models self-control and restraint (advocating good manners, for instance, although not for their own virtue but because of how they can help us to be happier) and it's just not as interesting as Hamilton's bad girl blues.

Having said that, what Dr. Johnson, Gretchen Rubin, and people I know have in common is a sincere, unpretentious desire to know how to live, ethically, and fulfill themselves at the same time. Both Hamilton and Rubin offer answers and some of the same answers (work hard; get things done; make things; make a difference; do what needs doing) but Rubin's approach will resonate more intimately with many of those in my world. Meanwhile, I'm a little astounded by this fact: Dr. Johnson may be dull, may even be embarrassing but I see that his influence continues to pervade how we live now. (God, I should have paid more attention when we were reading Rasselas!)

What I might be reading next

Was delighted to find that my library had gotten me In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson; I know quite a few people who love that book. Was also thrilled to see that Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson, had arrived.

First of all, what a great title! Secondly, Atkinson is the author of Case Histories on which the PBS Masterpiece Theatre series was based (which I really enjoyed).

I decided to scam a look at the books my friend is reading: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt (he also published Will of the World, about our friend Bill Shakespeare, a year or two ago). I can see that this is kind of an anecdotal, creative nonfiction book in which Poggio Bracciolino and the Lucretius' On the Nature of Things play large roles.

Still working my way through the Happiness Project, however. May was a good month; I think I'm somewhere in June or July.

12.15.11 Just picked up Andre Dubus' Townie and started reading in the middle. I thought it was so well written. It just pulled me along -- I had to pry myself away from it. Dubus is the author of House of Sand and Fog, an Oprah book (it was also made into a movie).

Dubus' book is a memoir about his youth and his memories of his father, an accomplished writer and professor, albeit not very "tweedy."  In his youth, Dubus goes through a long period in which he becomes passionate about lifting weights and gets into a number of fights.  At the same time, he's beginning to write.  To me, it's a strange mixture:  a  combination of academe, PBR, fistfights and a lovely descriptive prose.  

London Holiday by Richard Peck

This story is about the intersection of the lives of four American women and that of their bed and breakfast landlady.

Lesley, Margo and Julia all grew up together in Missouri and their lives have taken them in different directions: Margo is an elementary school teacher in Chicago, while Lesley has become a socialite in St. Louis and Julia owns her own interior design business in New York.

When Margo is shot by a disgruntled parent and Julia's mother dies, "Les" feels a need for connection with her old friends and proposes - or perhaps, steamrolls her friends into - a trip to London.

Les imagines a round of touristy sites and elegant tea at the Dorchester in the afternoon. But events quickly intervene: Margo is shattered when her daughter announces that she's pregnant, and Julia, who'd hoped to pick up some furniture for a new house on the West Coast, is swept off her feet by a disorganized antiques dealer in Bermondsey. Then an unexpected development finds them donning aprons to manage the bed and breakfast, and the ladies feel forced to postpone their return to America.

It all ends happily, and this is a perfect escapist read, as well as a little bit of a love letter to London. I wish I knew what prompted the author to write this story, but perhaps it was his fondness for London or the sheer incongruity of these ladies making themselves at home in Chelsea.

After I'd read it, I racked my brain, trying to put my finger on what about this book was so familiar. This book reminded me a lot of Alison Lurie's Foreign Affairs, perhaps for obvious reasons, and also of Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax novels, and especially, Caravan (also by Dorothy Gilman). Oh, and it reminds me of Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, where a charlady wins a contest and travels to Paris to be fitted for her Christian Dior "New Look" gown.

I didn't know who Richard Peck was when I began this novel, and from Wikipedia I've learned that Richard Peck was born in Decatur, Illinois, although he now lives in New York (and teaches somewhere else, I believe). He's a well known author of young adult fiction, although he's also written novels for adults and nonfiction. He started his career as a teacher and began publishing in 1970. He won the Edgar Allan Poe award for Are You in the House Alone? and the Newbery Award for A Year Down Yonder.

From London Holiday:


The row had been thrown up to shelter the workers of some earlier century, jerry-built to begin with and then badly knocked about by Jerry.  The ceilings were all down, and the scullery still had its earth floor and a single tap over a stone sink.  Above, there were two floors of bedrooms roughly boxed in with a bathroom of sorts added and a leaking loo, though the original lav was still out back.

Now that some time has passed, I find myself feeling that however down home the folks from Missouri are, however charming Julia's ability to snag a lord wearing only Talbots, what stays with me is the landlady from Chelsea - the woman who was given an house when she was discarded by her married lover and who turns it into a successful bed-and-breakfast/antiques business.  She interests me and I find myself wondering about her genesis and wishing I could ask Richard Peck about her origins.

Reading Now

Still working my way through the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.

I've been reading a little in The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage by Frederick P. Hitz, which compares the reality of espionage with how it's been depicted in fiction. He mentions a lot of books by classic authors: Kim by Rudyard Kipling, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, Ashenden by Somerset Maugham (which I'd never heard of), The Quiet American and especially, The Human Factor by Graham Greene. Hitz also mentioned Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands and Eric Ambler's A Coffin for Demetrios. He mentions books Le Carre a lot: Russia House, The Perfect Spy, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. A great virtue of this book is that it is only 188 pages.

It is interesting to find out more, and especially about their motivation, about the Cambridge Five. Generally, I think I'd enjoy it more if I'd read Le Carre or any of these books. I've just read Nostromo by Joseph Conrad, and that was sometime back .. I don't really remember it but I think it shaped my view.

Oh, and I've been reading a little of London Holiday by Richard Peck. It seems very dated but it was published in 1998. It has a very gossipy tone, and it looks backward at the eighties, mentioning the AIDS crisis and the Princess of Wales. It's about the proprietress of a B & B on Radnor Walk in Chelsea and the four American women who come to stay for a London holiday.

I brought home At Home by Bill Bryson and I read a few paragraphs from the chapter on the Plum Room and felt entirely satisfied that I would enjoy it. I also brought home The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan but I haven't even cracked it open yet.