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Friends Along the Way
Betsy Lewis is an innocent abroad until she meets Alice Blanders Russo and her much younger lover, Leo Conti. Together they form a triangle of friendship and desire that will turn BetsyOCOs marriage?and her principles?upside down. Add a hilarious excursion to find her Italian ?rootsOCO and the rediscovery of an old friend (brilliant, black and gay), and Betsy is on a road to self-discovery filled with unexpected turnings and definitely dangerous curves. Alive with the attractions and contradictions of Rome and the Americans who gathered there in the ?60OCOs and ?70OCOs, "Friends Along the Way" explores serious relationships with just the right touch of wild humor, capturing the flavor of love Italian style?rich, robust, and a feast to remember.
Julia Markus, an English professor at Hofstra University, received the Houghton Mifflin Literary Award for her first novel, "Uncle," which was followed by three well-received novels, "American Rose," "Friends Along the Way" and "A Change of Luck," as well as her critically acclaimed biographies, "Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning" and "Across An Untried Sea: Discovering Lives Hidden in the Shadow of Convention and Time." She has won a National Endowment for the Arts grant and two National Endowment for the Humanities grants. Her most recent book is "J. Anthony Froude: The Last Undiscovered Great Victorian."
?An entire generationOCOs rite of passage.OCO
OCo"Philadelphia Inquirer"
OCOTracing the ties that bind and the ties that unravel.OCO
OCo"Chicago Sun Times"
?A Book one wants to keep on reading.OCO
OCo"New York Time Book Review"
?Deeply engaging?opens up wonderful new angles onto fictionOCOs familiar landscape of passion and the search for selfOCO
OCo"Newsweek""
Julia Markus, an English professor at Hofstra University, received the Houghton Mifflin Literary Award for her first novel, "Uncle," which was followed by three well-received novels, "American Rose," "Friends Along the Way" and "A Change of Luck," as well as her critically acclaimed biographies, "Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning" and "Across An Untried Sea: Discovering Lives Hidden in the Shadow of Convention and Time." She has won a National Endowment for the Arts grant and two National Endowment for the Humanities grants. Her most recent book is "J. Anthony Froude: The Last Undiscovered Great Victorian."
?An entire generationOCOs rite of passage.OCO
OCo"Philadelphia Inquirer"
OCOTracing the ties that bind and the ties that unravel.OCO
OCo"Chicago Sun Times"
?A Book one wants to keep on reading.OCO
OCo"New York Time Book Review"
?Deeply engaging?opens up wonderful new angles onto fictionOCOs familiar landscape of passion and the search for selfOCO
OCo"Newsweek""
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 28, 2022
Usually I rate up if my rating is in the .5 range, and I rated this one 3.5, but it just didn't feel like a 4.
There was a really beautiful story underneath the complications. What I didn't like was how needlessly wordy it felt. The book is only 317 pages, but it felt like I was reading something twice as long.
I did definitely appreciate the humor and cleverness that was interspersed throughout. I just wish it had felt more cohesive as a whole. I enjoyed the sapphic undertones (and overtones) and loved the love story between the women. But the fact that most of them were motivated by the men in their lives irked me.
Also didn't appreciate the use of the n word so freely in so many places. I understand that the writer was conveying racism on purpose, but it made me deeply uncomfortable to see it so many times in such a short space.
There was a really beautiful story underneath the complications. What I didn't like was how needlessly wordy it felt. The book is only 317 pages, but it felt like I was reading something twice as long.
I did definitely appreciate the humor and cleverness that was interspersed throughout. I just wish it had felt more cohesive as a whole. I enjoyed the sapphic undertones (and overtones) and loved the love story between the women. But the fact that most of them were motivated by the men in their lives irked me.
Also didn't appreciate the use of the n word so freely in so many places. I understand that the writer was conveying racism on purpose, but it made me deeply uncomfortable to see it so many times in such a short space.
Displaying 1 of 1 review