Category: Fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN-13: 9781416532620
Pub. Date: April 2008 (Reprint)
Date Read: October 2008
"I looked out the window and was filled with contentment. I was on a train. There was no landscape, ugly or beautiful, to demand my attention... None of the passengers within my view were badly dressed. I had the right book with me... I was happily married but alone, nothing in the immediate past to regret, nothing in the immediate future to fear. In between -- the best place to be."
In this novel told in stories we get to know Grace Hanford through the various stages of her life. She's been a daughter, a wife, an orphan and everything in between. The eight stories are like snapshots of her life as she tries to find some balance and her place in the world.
Whether she's having an affair with a married man, overspending on clothes she's not even sure she likes, or adjusting to middle age, the book captures the important moments with some humor but most of all, with a lot of sensitivity.
The Old Economy Husband, the first story in the novel, is one of my favorites. Grace has turned fifty and she's lost her mother. She seems to be going through a period of malaise, not sure about her career and what to do next but what is clear is the support she has from her husband, Richard.
"He was long and lanky, my husband, as straight-arrow decent as Jimmy Stewart. Not neurotic or tricky, not the least bit mean. He'd never taken a drug, not even pot. Are you sure you're even an American? I asked him."
In General Strike Grace and Richard decide to accompany her brother, Alex, and his wife to Rome for Thanksgiving. After Grace's mother died things between the two siblings had been tense but this could be a way for them to be together. They dine in cozy cafes, visit the Trevi Fountain and browse pricey boutiques but the couples seem distant from each other. Grace and Alex are too ill to go sightseeing one day and send of their spouses on their own while they hang out in the hotel watching a documentery on the Kennedy assassination.
"We arranged ourselves comfortably on the bed -- we happened to be wearing four-star terrycloth but we might as well have been in the matching pajamas with feet from the brown book - and turned our attention to the TV. We watched. This was our Rome, our Vatican, our Communion, our Sistine Chapel, our Chanukah, our Sabbath, our sacred ritual, our mourning, our ruins, our relic, our forgotten sadness, our ancient history, our rite. We could have crawled inside the television if we could. We would have eaten it whole."
Despite their differences and disagreements the two siblings finally find themselves at peace.
What appealed to me most about this book is that Grace just tries to find something good about each particular time in her life, no matter how many painful things may be going on. An engaging collection of linked stories.