This week’s headline? dressing for him/consumed by imaginationWhy this book? great-aunt recommended author/and he's IrishWhich book format? cheap at Half-Price/double the funPrimary reading environment? bedtime at home/day in airportsAny preconceived notions? for old ones/bog o' detailsIdentify most with? Mary Louise Dallon/Mrs. Emily DelahuntyThree little words? “smelt of poverty"/"faith in time"Goes well with? rissoles = meat pies?/packet of MSRecommend this to? my late grandmother/newly wed friendI sat in a coffee shop — not sprawling and bohemian but sterile, metallic, empty — alone at the last table with my back to the entrance. I had my coat draped over my shoulders while I read a book and sipped a latte. I was avoiding him, because he was in the midst of one of his unfaithful phases.He and a mutual friend must have spotted me from the street, because they appeared beside my table. The mutual friend spoke to me about some future plans and walked away. He hung back, plucked at the shoulder of my coat, said “I like this style,” and left. I kept my eyes on the book while I jammed my arms back into their sleeves.I had always dressed differently, obsessed with classic movie stars and the word nostalgia. I wasn’t voted Best Dressed in my high school class, and that was a good thing. My style was evolving, and until that moment in the coffee shop, I had never doubted my potential.After him, I lost my swagger. The risks I took seemed uncalculated and stupid, the thrift store buys no longer quirky and fun. Scale numbers rose as clothing budget shrank, and I started taking the advice of some very silly people. It happened slowly, of course, but my confidence began to dwindle the second I put my arms through the sleeves of that coat. He had tripped me as I walked the runway that is life. I've never dressed according to some male ideal, but I did allow a man to drain away my pride in my appearance. In Reading Turgenev, I found a sweet spot for personal style: a woman dressing to please a man, yes, but a specific man — the man she loves, who loves her back.***It took me a while to find the connection between Reading Turgenev and My House in Umbria. Yes, the narrator of the second story admitted to being a romance writer, which immediately sends up red flags about the L-bomb. “Does love like hers frighten everyone just a little?” William Trevor asks near the end of Turgenev; it’s easy to see how the authoress of Flight to Enchantment and Behold My Heart! could harbor the same capacity for scary love.She didn’t seem so bad; at least, not before I put down the book to ingest a bag of MSG-ritos and catch my connecting flight. When I picked up the story again, Mr. Riversmith had arrived and Emily was unleashing a few hundred pounds of crazy. Yikes! This woman cannot be trusted. She reminded me of a friend who, though she had a slutty reputation, I had never seen on the prowl until the night she made up her mind about something and transformed into this stupid mouth-breathing beast with the self-awareness of a turnip. It was unreal, and I have to wonder if I have ever acted like that (I can think of four occasions where it’s definitely possible, but of course I have my excuses prepared).Ignoring the slut-sneezing and -shaming aspect of the story, there’s still that unawareness of one's own obtuse phrasing and sappy observations that plagues some writers/human beings. I worry about this shit constantly. Case in point: I read this book whilst travelling home from a wedding that had been held “in the round,” with the guests’ chairs surrounding the bride and groom in a circular arrangement. At dinner, I mentioned that it seemed very unifying and supportive, and the woman sitting next to me scoffed: “there’s all sorts of symbolism in it.”Like, duh.…and 3 follow-upsOther cultural accompaniments: Grace Kelly by Mika, A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner (1930), Richard Harrow on Boardwalk Empire, The Centre for Sustainable Fashion, Something Inside So Strong by Labi Siffre, Betty Draper on Mad Men *** Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood (1976), Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend (1967- ), The King’s Speech (2010), Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), Jonathan Franzen, Veronica Mars: Like a Virgin (2004).Grade: A-/A-I leave you with this: “She’d bought clothes from the poor when there was a shopful of clothes underneath where she lived.”/"...retail a dream..." "Hoping to encourage him, I carefully retailed the details of the dream." Shouldn't it be retell and retold? What am I missing?
William Trevor is "the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language.“ The New Yorker. Two Lives, is a pair of novellas, published together in 1991: Reading Turgenev and My House in Umbria. The book was short listed for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, and Reading Turgenev was short listed for the Man Booker award. tTrevor’s characters are often people who find themselves trapped by their circumstances, buried alive in effect. In Reading Turgenev, we first meet Mary Louise in the place where her life has brought her, an asylum for the insane. tMary Louise Dalton lives on her family farm, but longs for life in town. She puts herself in the path of Elmer Quarry, owner of a family drapery business, which he runs with the two spinster sisters. Elmer invites Mary Louise to the movies, and so begins a dull courtship and a inevitable marriage. tMary Louise finds herself encased in an unconsummated marriage, an attic hideaway, and the revulsion of two sisters-in-law. On a walk through town, Mary Louise alters her route and makes a decision to visit a invalid cousin, Robert. This decision is made without premeditation, and very nearly not made at all. Mary Louise’s conversations with Robert blossom into love, and upon his death, morph into an obsession. tFor the rest of the story, Trevor describes Mary Louise’s attempts to liberate herself from her entombment. Trevor’s depiction of obsession and detachment from reality is genius. “For thirty-one years she’d clung to a refuge in which her love affair could spread itself, a safe house offering sanctuary. For thirty-one years she passed as mad and was at peace.” tEmily Delahunty, in My House in Umbria>/i>, is a character of her own creation. From an orphaned daughter of circus performers, she has gone to brothel proprietress to mistress of an Italian pensione. To support herself, Mrs. Delahunty has written romances, with titles such as Flight to Enchantment and Behold my Heat! As the story opens, Mrs. Delahunty has lost her inspiration, but hardly her imagination. Between her past and her stories, there seem to be a great crowd occupying the house in Umbria: real, imagined, alive and dead. tDuring a trip by rail, the train is bombed. Mrs. Delahunty is wounded and several passengers in her car are killed. Three of the wounded come home with Mrs. Delahunty to recover, including young Aimée, traveling with her parents and brother, and the only one in her family to survive. The others There are also the English General, and an exotic German, Otmar, who has lost his fiancée. The little group of strangers coalesces in the house, and tries to bring Aimée out of her shocked silence. Finally, an uncle is located in America, and after some delays, comes to claim his niece. The American, Thomas Riversmith, is an unimaginative soul, confused and annoyed by Mrs. Delahunty’s insistence on discussing her dreams, characters from her books and the details she has discovered of the lives of all those in her home. “’It is as though, Tom, we are all inside a story that is being composed as each day passes.’” (In 2003, My House in Umbria was made into an HBO movie starring Maggie Smith.)
What do You think about Two Lives (1992)?
“A person’s life isn’t orderly, it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present’s hardly there; the future doesn’t exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person’s life.”Love may make one happy or else love may bring unhappiness: the heroine’s marriage turns into an excruciating disaster so she tries to hide in her dreamworld but a dreamworld is so brittle…Such is a life in Reading Turgenev.“Once, somewhere, I have seen a painted frieze continuing around the inside walls of a church – people processing in old-fashioned dress, proceeding on their way to Heaven or to Hell, I’m not sure which. Over the years the tourists who have come to my house have lingered in my memory like that.”The heroine is a guesthouse proprietress and an author of some pink novels – she and her guests are trying to recuperate after a terrible gory calamity. Judging by the human nature depicted in the novel the people on the frieze are heading for hell…Such is a life in My House in Umbria.William Trevor is meticulous in every tiny detail and psychologically very profound.
—Vit Babenco
Reading Turgenev, which is one of the novellas in this collection, is truly wonderful. It tells the story of Mary Louise, trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man and juxtaposes this with a man who shares her love of Russian novels, her true love.The characterisation, as is always the case in Trevor's writing, is excellent. I found it extremely poignant that Mary Louise's feelings of true love and ultimate loss, were misinterpreted by those around her, as insanity.A beautiful and moving story which I will remember for some time.
—Melanie
Two women, both fifty-six (pure coincidence that I’m reading this), who both, for a time at least, live in fantasy worlds, blurring the border between the place they live in their heads and the world outside. One of them saves herself, the other makes herself ridiculous, but helps to rescue people too, offers them a place to heal. William Trevor cannot put a foot wrong. There's not an untidy phrase to be found. Controlled, but not tight.I re-read Reading Turgenev. The journey is quite a different one when you know where you're going. What's truly impressive: the subtly shifting points of view, and the way that the narrator withholds all comment, judgement, evaluation. William Trevor allows the reader that privilege. But that privilege is impossible to enjoy, as everything seems to float away and shimmer in the air. A mirage? I don't know, nothing can be known for sure, and all of us live inside our own heads, for there is nowhere else to be.
—·Karen·
