Two Lives

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This novella is more like a long story, and I loved every minute I spent with it. Trevor’s writing is as it always is: gorgeous. It’s never filled with overwrought metaphors, but is spare and elegant, instead and filled with the deepest compassion for humanity. It’s so beautiful, it always, or almost always, brings me to tears. READING TURGENEV is one of the most heartfelt and beautiful stories I have ever read, and I have no doubt it will remain so.

The implicit collusion of Stein and Toklas with Bernard Fay - who at the time was busily compiling lists of Freemasons for the Nazis to arrest - was troubling in the extreme. What they did to obtain and hold onto their beautiful country house may have been immoral, at the very least it was achieved with the protection of Fay and his like.

First a disclaimer. I've never listened to Larry Elder on the radio and knew absolutely nothing about him. And took this book straight on without context, bias or any introductory knowledge to its nature at all. I just saw the title in a goodreads friend's lists and added it. It takes a long time to read The Making of Americans. The language Stein writes in (after cutting herself loose from the conventional language of the opening Dehning section) is not the transparent language through which we enter stories, forgetting we are reading. We never forget we are reading while reading The Making of Americans. Stein seems to be transcribing rather than

Emily’s birth parents were English sideshow performers who didn’t want a child in their life. Consequently, they sold Emily to a man who abused her sexually when she was just a child. Finally able to escape, Emily, with no apologies to anyone, became a prostitute in Africa where she managed to save enough money to buy a villa in sunny, colorful Umbria. It is there that she took up romance writing, a hobby that unexpectedly brought her, not only money but legions of adoring fans. As she revisits her past, we learn that Mary Louise, at twenty-one and the daughter of a farmer, desired nothing more than love, a family of her own, and the glamour she believes she’ll find in town. She agrees to marry Elmer Quarry, a bald, paunchy townsman who is twice her age, but still feels it’s his duty to provide himself and the world with an heir. The sparse prose took a while for me to get into, but to brilliant effect—this is a story I would recommend strongly, in a solid four star kind of way, in a way that keeps you feeling something indefinable but persistent.A heartrending new book -- the story of a marriage and the story of two lives -- from the author of the international bestselling novel A Suitable Boy

If things truly come in waves, we seem to be riding a Gertrude Stein tsunami. Recent Stein events and books include: Yale University Press's new editions of the Stein opuses Ida and Stanzas in Meditation, both books beautifully considered in last month's issue of Bookslut by Elizabeth Bachner.Henny, initially, doesn’t want him staying with them because he’s not German. However, she’s soon charmed by his warm and friendly manner, his kindness, and his humor. Henny is engaged to Hans, a young German, and so she’s not looking for a relationship. Still, she enjoys Shanti’s company. Even if she had wanted Shanti for a partner, the rise of Hitler puts an end to any hopes of romance. Shanti doesn’t dwell much on WWII itself. Instead, he focuses on the personal stories of his friends and colleagues who, like him, are trying to keep their lives together when everything descends into chaos. He also doesn’t look for pity after what happened to his arm—conversely, he is stoic and encourages us to take some time to reflect on our own circumstances. Both "Reading Turgenev" and "My House in Umbria" are gorgeously wrought novels. Each is infused with Trevor's trademark melancholy, bleakness, insight, subtle wit, and above all, his tremendous compassion for the entire human race. On the positive side, there were moments, when I thought - Yes - that is a particular feeling or thought caught exactly, unfortunately those insights were drowned in the awfulness of the attitudes and platitudes of all the minor characters. When Seth began reconstructing their story, more than 10 years ago, he did so with little sense of where it might lead. By then Henny was dead and Shanti, 85 and in poor health, needed the stimulus of some project. In the event, as he sat down, laptop at the ready, to conduct his interviews, it was Seth who was stimulated - and made to grasp how many events and intellectual currents of the 20th century intersected with the lives of Shanti and Henny.

What intrigued me most about Shanti that he never talked about the aggressive bigotry and rise of Nazism while he was in Germany. This impressed me as well as annoyed me. Impressed me because this mass maddening hysteria did not make him a bitter man, he continued with his life and work; it annoyed me because I wondered how could he remain so silent when everything around him was rotting. I also thought of the author that he did not probe deeper into Shanti's thoughts about what had happened in Germany and had it affected him. He alluded to them but not in any direct manner. Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read. Book 20 – threesomes, practice makes perfect. Another summer job ends up with the usual chaos. (June to September 1986). Neither Mary Louise nor Elmer Quarry are in love, but both desire to make the best of things. Complications ensue on their wedding night when it becomes obvious that Elmer will never be able to give Mary Louise the child that both he and she long to have, for Elmer is not only bald and paunchy, he is impotent as well. My experience with the first, Reading Turgenev, was exactly as I described above and how I associate my best times with this (usually reliable for me) author and I would rate that one a 4.5!A lot of people have been puzzled by the connection between these two novellas. They both have as their pivot a woman of the same age who lives in a fantasy world. My theory is the second novella was written out of the missed opportunity he detected in the first novella. That, in a sense, he was rewriting the first novella from a less romantic perspective. There's a kiss in the first novella which maybe shouldn't have been there, an act of reciprocation which gives some credence to Mary Louise's lifelong romantic obsession with her cousin. In a sense this kiss makes her narrative more reliable than it needs to be. At times it felt like Trevor was extolling the virtues of romantic feeling and missed a rich opportunity to question its hidden purposes and even its validity. And there perhaps was sown the seed of giving the second novella an utterly unreliable narrator. Two Lives is composed of two elegant and elegiac novels, each centering on a fiftysomething woman and each taking place during the summer of 1987. Elder hasn't lived an interesting enough life to write a compelling autobiography. If he has, he does not want to write about such matters, which might be refreshing if it didn't feel like he is nonetheless attempting to communicate something here--about himself, his father or his socio-political views. He spent eight hours in jail...because he mouthed-off to a cop after being rightfully accused of jaywalking. Not exactly Hurricane territory, and this doesn’t go anywhere. Two Lives, however, has won a special place in my heart, and while I love everything Trevor writes, I doubt that anything will ever top Two Lives for me.