Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn

Lost for Words

A Sense of Place

No doubt about it, the setting for acclaimed British author Edward St. Aubyn’s delightful, witty work, Lost for Words, could be none other than England.  Quintessential England, at that, with men named Tobias and Malcolm, and ladies named Penny Feathers.

Throw in a uniquely British-sounding book contest–the Elysian Prize for Literature, sponsored by the patrician-sounding Elysian Group–and you might feel ready to jump right on a double-decker bus with a Union Jack pinned smartly to your lapel.

 A Sense of the Absurd, Charmingly Served

For those who enjoy a good dose of acerbic wit, this novel will supply a smorgasborg of it!  At every turn, the novel turns convention and snobbery on its pointed nose.

Why, take your pick! A short-listed cookbook of generations-old Indian recipes, The Palace Cookbook, heralded as a brilliant piece of fiction (though it is neither brilliant nor fiction), after a prestigious publishing house mistakenly submits the Indian cookbook instead of the much-anticipated novel of our tragic heroine?

An Indian manservant commissioned by his employer’s “Indian grandee” nephew (whose own novel was overlooked while his aunt’s Indian cookbook is celebrated) to murder one of the judges in revenge?  An elevator that malfunctions and traps the esteemed Malcolm Craig, Chair of the Elysian Prize committee,  mere moments and just steps from the podium where he is to deliver the Elysian prize?

Missing Pieces

Katherine Burns.   Emotionally vacant, sexually vociferous though never sated.   Why, Katherine, why?  I would have liked to have known more about the life events that contributed to her desperate hunt for men who seemingly could never fill that reservoir of sadness she forever sought to fill with them.

How fitting that her novel–the one that one of her lovers seemingly had a hand in (accidentally?) failing to deliver to the Elysian committee by the deadline– was titled, Consequences.

Overall

Overall, Lost for Words, is a winner.  If there were an Elysian prize for the work of fiction with the most echoes of that most prized master of wit, Oscar Wilde, then this surely would take top honors, if not top prize.

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

The Days of Abandonment

A Sense of Newness, Yet a Sense of Having Been There Before

There are some books that stay with us–like the aftertaste of a favorite Indian dish–long after the waiter has taken the last plate away.

Elena Ferrante’s masterpiece, The Days of Abandonment,  translated elegantly from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, continues to have just such a profound impact on my days, long after I finished savoring her magical words.

Indeed, there are some books that say things in such a way that it’s as if one is hearing for the very first time things one has heard many times before.  And when the things those books are saying are the very things that one has been trying to say as beautifully as the author has, one feels at  home, one feels an amazing sense of peace.  A sense of peace born of the thought, “I am not alone.”

 A Sense of Loss

The Days of Abandonment tells the story of Olga’s excruciating journey from betrayed wife to liberated sojourner, with microscopic scrutiny of one particularly painful, gut-wrenching day, and with an overflowing of empathy that makes understandable, if not rational, the absurd things an abandoned wife and mother might do.

Missing Pieces

If I were forced at pain of injury to conjure something I found missing in The Days of Abandonment, it would be only that I did not know enough of why Mario left Olga for Gina, other than the obvious:  youth and availability.  Of course, to venture deeper into Mario’s reasoning, in the hands of such an extraordinarily skilled author as Elena Ferrante, would be to unearth enough material for a book all its own.

Overall

Overall, this book beautifully tells the story of countless women in countless cultures.  It tells the story of my mother–or at least I believe it does.  (If she were here, and I thought she would be willing to answer, I might ask her if Olga’s story isn’t hers as well.)

And if Olga were here, I would thank her for having the courage to tell her story.  So powerful is this story, that it is hard to believe that Olga lives only between the book covers.  In reality, she lives everywhere there are women who’ve suffered the singular, yet universally-shared pain of betrayal.

Thank you, Elena Ferrante, for telling our stories with such courage and grace.

 

Every day, a day of Thanks-giving!

It is a beautiful day in Houston, Texas.  This, the last Sunday of November 2014.  This, the grand finale to the Thanksgiving Day celebration that means so much to so many, and for so many different reasons.

Those reasons, for me, include gratitude for a life that has given me my beautiful son, yet taken from me at too young an age, my beautiful mother.   A life that has given me a brilliant father, yet taken from that very father the strength and resilience necessary to continue to overcome life’s myriad hurdles.  A life that has given me a sharp mind and amazing resourcefulness, yet taken from me the constancy early in my life that perhaps would have ensured more constancy later in my life.

As this Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, I am above all thankful for a life that through pain and love has given me the ability to find countless things to be thankful for, each and every day.