These two recent reads bring touches of humour to the serious extraordinariness of ordinary cohabiting relationships, and the impact on the couple of friendships and obsessions outside the partnership. The first features a thirty-something lesbian twosome in London (with one of the partners making frequent visits to Paris). The second focuses on a heterosexual marriage of some duration, the couple having moved to Bath on retirement.
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Footnotes to Sex by Mia Farlane
May wants to do a PhD. Do you think she should? Her partner, Jansen, thinks so – that is, if she wants to – because they’ve been living in a crummy London bedsit while she saves up for the fees. Francine Brion, the sophisticated Parisian subject of her prospective studies thinks so too. In fact, Francine thinks she’s already started, and bombards her with copies of her articles and essays, while keeping up a constant criticism of May’s absence of ideas. (And her hair[1].) Do you think she should tell Francine she hasn’t even submitted a proposal? Do you think Francine likes her, maybe fancies her, or is she simply a narcissist who appreciates an acolyte, as long as her opinions don’t clash too much with hers? But if May should forge a closer connection with Francine, will it spoil her relationship with Jansen?
It’s hard to write engagingly about banality: Alison Moore does it beautifully and now, I’ve discovered, Mia Farlane does it too. Humour helps, and both of these authors can make me laugh out loud (an extremely rare consequence of my reading). But there’s depth and poignancy also. This novel isn’t only about fandom, procrastination and the silence that speaks volumes in many long-term couplings, it’s also[2] about the pain of lacking the confidence to know what you want. I think there are more people who struggle with this than the hero’s journey model[3], so beloved of creative writing courses, would have us believe.
I missed this novel when it was published by Penguin in 2009 but, having connected with the author at one of this crazy summer’s webinars, I thought I’d have a quiet peek. I’m delighted I don’t have to keep quiet about what I thought of it: I’ve added it to my list of 2020’s favourite reads.
[1] From lockdown hair to Buxton Fringe
[2] Like Alison Moore’s He Wants
[3] Having protested against this for years, I'm 75% converted. See last year's blog post Desperately seeking elixir?
It’s hard to write engagingly about banality: Alison Moore does it beautifully and now, I’ve discovered, Mia Farlane does it too. Humour helps, and both of these authors can make me laugh out loud (an extremely rare consequence of my reading). But there’s depth and poignancy also. This novel isn’t only about fandom, procrastination and the silence that speaks volumes in many long-term couplings, it’s also[2] about the pain of lacking the confidence to know what you want. I think there are more people who struggle with this than the hero’s journey model[3], so beloved of creative writing courses, would have us believe.
I missed this novel when it was published by Penguin in 2009 but, having connected with the author at one of this crazy summer’s webinars, I thought I’d have a quiet peek. I’m delighted I don’t have to keep quiet about what I thought of it: I’ve added it to my list of 2020’s favourite reads.
[1] From lockdown hair to Buxton Fringe
[2] Like Alison Moore’s He Wants
[3] Having protested against this for years, I'm 75% converted. See last year's blog post Desperately seeking elixir?
Laura Laura by Richard Francis
Gerald, a retired history professor, lives with his wife, Abby, a former schoolteacher and current horserider and potter, in Bath. One autumn evening, he’s accosted by a homeless woman called Laura who seems to want a witness to her suicide attempt. Fortunately, he’s able to dissuade her but, although they never meet again, she constantly preys on his mind. As, eventually, does another Laura, his former research student, with whom he had an extremely brief and regrettable affair.
Gerald’s specialism, partly borrowed from his physicist friend, is quantum mechanics applied to history: the idea that, if the multiverse exists, there must be an infinite number of alternative histories in which anything that could happen did happen. As Gerald remembers and misremembers his past, and discovers surprising things about his long marriage and his closest friend, the world, and his place within it, seems more of a puzzle than ever.
This is a fun novel, comic and witty, although in places – and this might be due to the mood I was in when I read it – the humour crept into farce and the linguistic gymnastics put the narrative on pause. On the serious side, it poses questions about memory and forgetting and how we edit our own lives into a strand that makes sense. Thanks to publishers Europa editions for my review copy.
I’ll leave you with one of my more light-hearted stories about coupledom, “In Search of Mr Right”, from my collection on the theme of identity, Becoming Someone.
Gerald’s specialism, partly borrowed from his physicist friend, is quantum mechanics applied to history: the idea that, if the multiverse exists, there must be an infinite number of alternative histories in which anything that could happen did happen. As Gerald remembers and misremembers his past, and discovers surprising things about his long marriage and his closest friend, the world, and his place within it, seems more of a puzzle than ever.
This is a fun novel, comic and witty, although in places – and this might be due to the mood I was in when I read it – the humour crept into farce and the linguistic gymnastics put the narrative on pause. On the serious side, it poses questions about memory and forgetting and how we edit our own lives into a strand that makes sense. Thanks to publishers Europa editions for my review copy.
I’ll leave you with one of my more light-hearted stories about coupledom, “In Search of Mr Right”, from my collection on the theme of identity, Becoming Someone.
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