Mrs. O'Dell Reads

I love a memoir about a spunky girl moving to a different culture and learning to cope. (Just look at my reading list; it’s true.)

Elizabeth Bard’s Lunch in Paris is just another in a long line of memoirs I love. As a grad student in England, Bard meets Gwendal (pronounced Gwen-DAL), a Frenchman with a passion for cinema. What begins as weekend trysts en Paris becomes marriage and a proper expatriotism to Paris. Bard recounts eight years in Paris — from the time she had her first lunch with Gwendal to their marriage, learning to cook, and buying an apartment.  It’s sort of Under the Tuscan Sun in Paris.

Although Bard’s memoir might not be purely original (there are many other excellent memoirs in this genre, not the least of which is Julia Child’s delightful My Life in France), it is a lovely, light read — especially as I fell passionately in love with Paris this winter and was delighted to travel its streets and cafes again with Bard.  Bard is heartfelt — she doesn’t skip the difficulties of being an American in France. She doesn’t glorify Paris beyond its deserts (see the episode where a snarky French shoe salesman refuses to accept her return). And, of course, she made me giggle. Here she butchers her first fish:

“I took the knife and pressed its pointed tip into the belly of the fish. I hesitated, searching for something civilized to think about during my upcoming act of brutality. Had Jane Austen ever gutted a fish?

The knife made a ripping sound, like an uncooperative zipper.

It is a truth universally acknowledged…

I had a hold of something now, soft and dense, like a clot of blood.

…that a single man in possession of a good fortune,…

I pulled out the tiny heaert and liver.

…must be in want of a wife.

I yanked out the final membrane, guts dripping from my hands” (68-69).

I really enjoyed Lunch in Paris, and I read it in one sitting. It’s a great example of a genre I love — excellent for summer reading!

Admittedly, I am generally a book snob. Usually I am fairly selective about what I read, and I do classify people as “non-readers”, “readers”, “real readers.” It’s not necessarily nice, but it is the truh. (And after all, there are worse things to be than a book snob. Like a book lemming, for example. That’s far worse.)

Still, every so often after a deluge of heavy, serious reading, I do enjoy some chick lit. It’s not something I’m proud of either, but, in the interest of full disclosure, here it is. For me, an Emily Giffin novel is the right kind of chick lit — usually better written and more creative than your average I-am-a-20-something-wanting-to-find-Prince-Charming-but-oh!-the-scandals-and-foibles-along-the-way-to-my-happy-(usually New York)-ending fare. Plus, she’s a UVa alumna. So what — I’m biased.

All of that being said, I really enjoyed Giffin’s first two novels Something Borrowed and Something Blue. They were easy, fun reads with interesting plots and endearing characters. Not so with Baby Proof. Disappointingly, for me Giffin’s third novel was just another chick lit book.

Claudia Parr, a high-powered New York City book editor, has the seemingly perfect life and marriage to Ben Davenport. Everything collapses, though, when Ben reneges on their pre-marriage pact to never have children.  Suddenly single and missing her “soulmate”, Claudia is forced to decide what she really wants in life and what she is willing to sacrifice in order to have it.

Other than the fact that this novel was an easy read, there was nothing that made me want to read. I felt like I had already read this book a few times over.  No matter how weighty my reading list, it will probably be awhile before I turn to Emily Giffin for relief.

Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge won the Pulizer Prize last year, so I won’t spend time telling you that this book is beautifully and compellingly written. Or that it’s good. At this point, these things are evident. Instead, I want to tell you about how Olive Kitteridgemade me feel.

OK (as I affectionately referred to it in my head) made me feel like I was sitting in a cabin in Maine, looking out at the water, drinking a cup of coffee, and talking to my very funny, bittersweet Grandmother.  It feels homey and intimate — as though you have always known the characters who poulate this book and are finally being let in on their secrets. I always harp on my students to avoid using first or second person pronouns when writing analytically about literature, but that’s the thing about Olive Kitteridge; while it is fantastic prose well-worthy of analysis, the brain and heart stop at “reader response”. You feel so much for these characters that you hardly care what motifs run throughout each story. The reader gets entirely consumed in “we” and “I”.

The book is billed as a “novel told in stories”. Indeed, each of the thirteen individual stories could stand alone, but put together they complete a narrative arc in the life of Olive Kitteridge, a blunt, no-nonsense former schoolteacher who rules her home   — and the town — with an iron fist. Olive’s life is clearly irrevocably woven into the life of the town; while only a handful of stories explicitly focus on Olive, her presence and influence are everywhere. The reader follows — directly and indirectly — Olive from middle age to her mid-seventies. We see the dynamic changes in her relationship with her saintly husband, Henry. We see her struggles with what it means to be a good mother, and how to cope with a son whose world does not revolve around hers. We see her letting go of loves and finding new loves in unexpected places.

I picked up Olive Kitteridge for all of the good, very serious, literary reasons — I liked the cover and it won the Pulitzer Prize.  While I liked the first story, I kept reading because I had purchased this book and because that’s what (in my mind) smart, good readers do — they plug away and keep reading.  And then I read “Winter Concert” (about halfway through), and I fell in love. This story follows a husband and wife in their seventies as they attend a concert in town. In so doing, the husband’s secret is revealed which ultimately unearths the pain of betrayal long past and long forgiven. In the end, the couple realize that they are at the end of their lives, but they still have one another. And that’s enough to make them forgive and forget anything. It’s raw and heartbreaking. Another favorite is “Tulips”, an Olive-centric story, about her husband’s hospitalization following a stroke.  Admittedly, this story did send my literary analysis meter into overdrive, as I delighted at the parallels between Strout’s story and Sylvia Plath’s poem of the same name about hospitalization (although with a clearly different message). Oh, how I love Plath … and how I love Strout.

Olive Kitteridge grew on me slowly and quietly. It is the kind of book that rewards its readers for sticking with it.  Even as I just finished it, I can’t wait to read it again. Maybe in Maine.