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The Liar's Wife: Four Novellas
In the short novels that make up this beautiful collection, Mary Gordon presents a quartet of finely rendered, emotionally resonant stories. Here we meet the ferocious Simone Weil during her last days as a transplant in New York City; a vulnerable American graduate student who escapes to Italy after her first, compromising love affair; the charming Irish liar of the title, who gets more out of life than most; and Thomas Mann, opening the heart of a high schooler in the Midwest. At every turn, Gordon revels in the interactions and crucial flashes of understanding that change lives forever. Entrancing reading, The Liar’s Wife is a wonderful demonstration of Gordon’s literary mastery and human sympathy.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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1075 people want to read
About the author
Mary Gordon
102 books158 followersMary Catherine Gordon is an American writer from Queens and Valley Stream, New York. She is the McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard College. She is best known for her novels, memoirs and literary criticism. In 2008, she was named Official State Author of New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
May 24, 2017
One of the telltale signs of powerful psychological fiction is the inability of many of its reviewers to come down on the same page. Whether they liked it or not, a quick scan of commentary on The Liar's Wife will show that the majority of people who've read this book walked away with markedly different impressions of what these stories were about. What this means is that Mary Gordon has managed to pluck some pretty strong psychic chords with her material - strong enough to elicit reactions that are far more revealing of a reader's character than anything the author has created or written out. The work is full of triggers, then, and siren calls to projection.
And so, you know, here I go...
Gordon has produced four novellas that, from my perspective, interconnect as an examination of the harsh human habit of self-imprisonment. Each story introduces an individual caught in a labyrinth of fear.
Seventy-two year old Jocelyn Pemberton is afraid of lies and has built her entire existence around Truth under the mistaken impression it will protect her from danger. (You can see in which ways she might be correct; much harder to discern how fully this restricts her.) Young mother Genevieve Levy lives in constant fear of losing respect for her mentor, a teacher whose presence on this pedestal keeps her world in order and her boundaries intact. Bill Morton, reflecting back on his high school years and an encounter with the intellectual giant Thomas Mann, finds the shame of his innocence still fresh and crushing to his spirit. Graduate student Theresa Riordan, a latchkey child who'd been primarily parented by nuns, shudders with the vision of herself as inept and utterly inconsequential, without even a heart to break or a language to speak as she travels for a month's study abroad.
The material is deep and deft and daring. Seldom do I find internal explorations of this magnitude in modern fiction. And while Gordon's hand appears on occasion - a little too firm, a little too forceful - she never allows herself to offer up more than an alternate perspective. How the reader chooses to interpret her invention remains entirely at his or her discretion.
This is superior work that slips, with silence and a fair degree of stealth, well beneath the skin.
And so, you know, here I go...
Gordon has produced four novellas that, from my perspective, interconnect as an examination of the harsh human habit of self-imprisonment. Each story introduces an individual caught in a labyrinth of fear.
Seventy-two year old Jocelyn Pemberton is afraid of lies and has built her entire existence around Truth under the mistaken impression it will protect her from danger. (You can see in which ways she might be correct; much harder to discern how fully this restricts her.) Young mother Genevieve Levy lives in constant fear of losing respect for her mentor, a teacher whose presence on this pedestal keeps her world in order and her boundaries intact. Bill Morton, reflecting back on his high school years and an encounter with the intellectual giant Thomas Mann, finds the shame of his innocence still fresh and crushing to his spirit. Graduate student Theresa Riordan, a latchkey child who'd been primarily parented by nuns, shudders with the vision of herself as inept and utterly inconsequential, without even a heart to break or a language to speak as she travels for a month's study abroad.
The material is deep and deft and daring. Seldom do I find internal explorations of this magnitude in modern fiction. And while Gordon's hand appears on occasion - a little too firm, a little too forceful - she never allows herself to offer up more than an alternate perspective. How the reader chooses to interpret her invention remains entirely at his or her discretion.
This is superior work that slips, with silence and a fair degree of stealth, well beneath the skin.
December 10, 2019
A thought from James Baldwin:
"Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty."
The difficult thing about reading Mary Gordon's fiction is not that she writes badly. Her prose is always tart and memorable, and she can sum up a character with a single telling detail. The problem is that she devotes her skills to promoting a sentimentalized and distorted view of human affairs.
As the title suggests, each of these four novellas explores the problem of lying. But where an earlier American author such as Nathaniel Hawthorne might condemn self-deception in no uncertain terms, might even dramatize the soul-destroying horror of a lifetime of self-deception, (crying out "be true! be true! be true!" at the end of the Scarlet Letter) Mary Gordon gives in to lies and advocates self-deception with something between a shrug and a sneer. Given the nature of modern life in a vulgar and coarse and democratic modern America, she seems to be saying, (or sneering) anyone who wishes to be a lady, a scholar, and a Catholic must be willing to stretch the truth at times. While the lies in these stories are presented as heroic, they actually appear more pathetic than anything else.
In these stories, we find a so-called saint who feasts on filet mignon and pretends it's horsemeat, a so-called literary giant who pretends to despise the Nazis of his homeland but hates America far more, a lady scientist who pretends to be at home with sex but is mortified by the very mention of sexy singers like Elvis Presley, and a so-called art student who pretends to value refinement and beauty but resorts to petty vandalism the moment her narrow-minded standards are threatened.
The story about the art student, "Fine Arts," is particularly revealing. Theresa Riordan is a typical Mary Gordon heroine, ashamed of her body, angry at men, unable to own her own womanhood. Theresa goes to Italy to study religious sculptures, but her worshipful attitude is both comical and grotesque. At one point she literally claims to be "ashamed" to be in the same room with the cool, stone statues, because her hot, dirty body is perspiring in the Italian heat. Is that sick or is that Catholic? Whatever it is, it's not Christian. The man who died on the cross wasn't made out of stone. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made *flesh*.
So in addition to being a prude, a snob, and a fraud, Theresa is an idol worshiper in the most literal sense. And notice how it's hatred of her own flesh that keeps her from any real understanding of (or sympathy for) the suffering flesh on the Cross. This is what happens when you build a cult of self-deception and self-loathing based around female purity, making the untouched flesh of the Virgin Mary more important than the sinful flesh of the Man on the Cross.
Now, Theresa seems like a mousy little thing, but she erupts in psychotic rage when a fellow artist in Italy paints what she considers to be a "dirty" picture of the Virgin Mary. Now what is really sending her over the edge? This is a girl who sleeps around, who has a sordid affair with one of her professors, and uses that to advance her career. She's no Virgin Mary! Yet she's very careful not to ever confess her sins in church, or even confide in the nuns who raised her -- though she never shuts up about how much she admires them. (When it comes to Mary Gordon and nuns, imitation is never the sincerest form of flattery. Instead hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue!)
Well, I think the problem with Theresa is that she's got too much to hide. And when that nasty boy paints a picture of a whore dressed up like the Virgin Mary, he's not really insulting the Blessed Virgin. He's exposing the lie that Theresa's whole life is built on. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what art is supposed to do. But Theresa isn't interested in that kind of art, and neither is Mary Gordon. That's why the story is called "Fine Arts." Because fine art, or genteel art, or civilized art, is what a corrupt civilization needs to conceal its crimes. Shakespeare called it the harlot's plastering art, and Jesus called it the whited sepulcher. But men are pigs. Right Mary Gordon?
I could go on for another ten pages, but what't she point? None of these characters are likable, but more to the point, their lies are without consequence. The chickens never come home to roost. Fantasy and wishful thinking abound, not only in the characters but in the author's presentation of them.
"Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty."
The difficult thing about reading Mary Gordon's fiction is not that she writes badly. Her prose is always tart and memorable, and she can sum up a character with a single telling detail. The problem is that she devotes her skills to promoting a sentimentalized and distorted view of human affairs.
As the title suggests, each of these four novellas explores the problem of lying. But where an earlier American author such as Nathaniel Hawthorne might condemn self-deception in no uncertain terms, might even dramatize the soul-destroying horror of a lifetime of self-deception, (crying out "be true! be true! be true!" at the end of the Scarlet Letter) Mary Gordon gives in to lies and advocates self-deception with something between a shrug and a sneer. Given the nature of modern life in a vulgar and coarse and democratic modern America, she seems to be saying, (or sneering) anyone who wishes to be a lady, a scholar, and a Catholic must be willing to stretch the truth at times. While the lies in these stories are presented as heroic, they actually appear more pathetic than anything else.
In these stories, we find a so-called saint who feasts on filet mignon and pretends it's horsemeat, a so-called literary giant who pretends to despise the Nazis of his homeland but hates America far more, a lady scientist who pretends to be at home with sex but is mortified by the very mention of sexy singers like Elvis Presley, and a so-called art student who pretends to value refinement and beauty but resorts to petty vandalism the moment her narrow-minded standards are threatened.
The story about the art student, "Fine Arts," is particularly revealing. Theresa Riordan is a typical Mary Gordon heroine, ashamed of her body, angry at men, unable to own her own womanhood. Theresa goes to Italy to study religious sculptures, but her worshipful attitude is both comical and grotesque. At one point she literally claims to be "ashamed" to be in the same room with the cool, stone statues, because her hot, dirty body is perspiring in the Italian heat. Is that sick or is that Catholic? Whatever it is, it's not Christian. The man who died on the cross wasn't made out of stone. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made *flesh*.
So in addition to being a prude, a snob, and a fraud, Theresa is an idol worshiper in the most literal sense. And notice how it's hatred of her own flesh that keeps her from any real understanding of (or sympathy for) the suffering flesh on the Cross. This is what happens when you build a cult of self-deception and self-loathing based around female purity, making the untouched flesh of the Virgin Mary more important than the sinful flesh of the Man on the Cross.
Now, Theresa seems like a mousy little thing, but she erupts in psychotic rage when a fellow artist in Italy paints what she considers to be a "dirty" picture of the Virgin Mary. Now what is really sending her over the edge? This is a girl who sleeps around, who has a sordid affair with one of her professors, and uses that to advance her career. She's no Virgin Mary! Yet she's very careful not to ever confess her sins in church, or even confide in the nuns who raised her -- though she never shuts up about how much she admires them. (When it comes to Mary Gordon and nuns, imitation is never the sincerest form of flattery. Instead hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue!)
Well, I think the problem with Theresa is that she's got too much to hide. And when that nasty boy paints a picture of a whore dressed up like the Virgin Mary, he's not really insulting the Blessed Virgin. He's exposing the lie that Theresa's whole life is built on. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what art is supposed to do. But Theresa isn't interested in that kind of art, and neither is Mary Gordon. That's why the story is called "Fine Arts." Because fine art, or genteel art, or civilized art, is what a corrupt civilization needs to conceal its crimes. Shakespeare called it the harlot's plastering art, and Jesus called it the whited sepulcher. But men are pigs. Right Mary Gordon?
I could go on for another ten pages, but what't she point? None of these characters are likable, but more to the point, their lies are without consequence. The chickens never come home to roost. Fantasy and wishful thinking abound, not only in the characters but in the author's presentation of them.
July 21, 2014
A collection of four novellas, Mary Gordon does something very tricky with two of them. In these two, the French philosopher, Simone Weil, and German literature great, Thomas Mann, both come to America around the time of WWII. To me, this is almost indulgent. Not that a little indulgence is wrong, but the concept sort of reminds me of the recent Tony Bennett duet recordings. It’s precarious for all involved. It could work really well (Diana Krall, Amy Winehouse, Michael Buble) or it could just get weird (Lady Gaga).
In the Simone Weil novella, which I found the better of the two, Weil accompanies her Jewish parents to the U.S. to escape the Nazi occupation of France. But Weil, being the Mother Theresa-like philosopher she is, wants to be back on the front lines helping her countrymen. She refuses to eat any foods other than what she thinks a typical soldier would eat.
Gordon creates a fictional character, Genevieve, a former student of Weil and also an escapee of occupied France. Genevieve discovers Weil is also in NYC and arranges to meet. Though Genevieve was greatly influenced by Weil and idolized her as a young girl, she has since matured, married, had a baby, and nearly completely assimilated to American culture. Anyone familiar with Weil’s philosophy can imagine the kind of tension that arises from this reunion.
At first, Genevieve is as enamored and overwhelmed as she was as a young student. But, eventually, Genevieve is disturbed by the intrusion of Weil’s philosophy into her every day reality.
This story was kind of ho-humming along until Genevieve’s perfectly normal and good-humored friends, Joe and Lily, arrive for a visit at the same time as Weil. Lily is Joe’s much younger mistress. (What could be more American than a brazen mistress?) Weil, to the surprise of Genevieve, engages Joe in the philosophical.
“You see, Joe,” says Mlle. Weil, “one of my shames is that many kinds of food disgust me. I have been very held back from being the kind of person I want to be because I seem to be susceptible to both fatigue and disgust.”
At this point, it seems all patience and reverence for Weil escapes Genevieve. She’s done with the musings and done being held hostage by the guilt of taking pleasure in life or having a nice cup of tea. Weil’s worldview just becomes too much for her.
It’s in this encounter that I think Gordon succeeds with this story. It reminded me of something Truman Capote might’ve written or even said in real life. And Dorothy Parker would’ve done worse.
“Genevieve wants to rush across the room and put her hand over Mlle. Weil’s mouth. Don’t talk like this, she wants to say. Nobody talks like this. Not someone they’ve just met. You are impossible.”
Of the four novellas, The Liar’s Wife was my favorite. It seemed more personal and was truly satisfying to read. I think fans of Alice McDermott or Anne Tyler might really enjoy this collection.
I have a goal to read each of the O. Henry Prize Juror Favorites, so I’m really looking forward to reading, “City Life”, which won in 1997 and is collected in The Stories of Mary Gordon
Thanks to Goodreads and Knopf for review copy.
In the Simone Weil novella, which I found the better of the two, Weil accompanies her Jewish parents to the U.S. to escape the Nazi occupation of France. But Weil, being the Mother Theresa-like philosopher she is, wants to be back on the front lines helping her countrymen. She refuses to eat any foods other than what she thinks a typical soldier would eat.
Gordon creates a fictional character, Genevieve, a former student of Weil and also an escapee of occupied France. Genevieve discovers Weil is also in NYC and arranges to meet. Though Genevieve was greatly influenced by Weil and idolized her as a young girl, she has since matured, married, had a baby, and nearly completely assimilated to American culture. Anyone familiar with Weil’s philosophy can imagine the kind of tension that arises from this reunion.
At first, Genevieve is as enamored and overwhelmed as she was as a young student. But, eventually, Genevieve is disturbed by the intrusion of Weil’s philosophy into her every day reality.
This story was kind of ho-humming along until Genevieve’s perfectly normal and good-humored friends, Joe and Lily, arrive for a visit at the same time as Weil. Lily is Joe’s much younger mistress. (What could be more American than a brazen mistress?) Weil, to the surprise of Genevieve, engages Joe in the philosophical.
“You see, Joe,” says Mlle. Weil, “one of my shames is that many kinds of food disgust me. I have been very held back from being the kind of person I want to be because I seem to be susceptible to both fatigue and disgust.”
At this point, it seems all patience and reverence for Weil escapes Genevieve. She’s done with the musings and done being held hostage by the guilt of taking pleasure in life or having a nice cup of tea. Weil’s worldview just becomes too much for her.
It’s in this encounter that I think Gordon succeeds with this story. It reminded me of something Truman Capote might’ve written or even said in real life. And Dorothy Parker would’ve done worse.
“Genevieve wants to rush across the room and put her hand over Mlle. Weil’s mouth. Don’t talk like this, she wants to say. Nobody talks like this. Not someone they’ve just met. You are impossible.”
Of the four novellas, The Liar’s Wife was my favorite. It seemed more personal and was truly satisfying to read. I think fans of Alice McDermott or Anne Tyler might really enjoy this collection.
I have a goal to read each of the O. Henry Prize Juror Favorites, so I’m really looking forward to reading, “City Life”, which won in 1997 and is collected in The Stories of Mary Gordon
Thanks to Goodreads and Knopf for review copy.
March 24, 2015
Connections are vital in the four novellas that comprise Mary Gordon’s latest work. One connection – a pathological liar and former husband, the famous eccentric French philosopher Simone Weil, the German novelist Thomas Mann, or a millionaire patron of the arts – enables the somewhat ordinary protagonist to gain insight and self-knowledge.
In the eponymous The Liar’s Wife, the opening story, Jocelyn is a wealthy, sheltered and anxious dowager, “the child who wept when the swings were taken down for the winter.” Into her carefully ordered life suddenly enters her first husband, Johnny, an Irish neer-do-well, a self-created man with an oversized love of life. Through her interaction with the down-and-out Johnny, she realizes, “If love casts out fears, does it follow that fear casts out love?” And she finally realizes that “without Johnny she wouldn’t have known, really, who she was. Because he had taught her who she was not.”
The two sandwiched stories – Simone Weil in New York and Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana” are similar in that both are focused on ordinary students who interact with these renowned yet very flawed individuals. And, each deals in its own way with the early years of World War II and America’s blindness about the impending horrors. In the first, Genevieve – a student of Ms. Weil – recognizes that “The times demand of those who live through them certain acts, gestures, and understandings that they would not have come to in ordinary times.” Similarly, Bill, who feels indelibly and permanently marked by Dr. Mann, recalls“The waking was a shock, a laceration, but it was one we needed. His words lanced the infection of our refused to understand who we were”.
The last novella, Fine Arts, weaves these themes together, along with themes that those who are familiar with Mary Gordon’s past works, particularly Spending, will recognize: the arts, the joys and pitfalls of faith, the search for self. Theresa Riordan, an attractive young scholarship student, nurtured by Milwaukee nuns, is ill-prepared for the larger world – her married lover, and eventually, her affluent much older mentor who collects Matteo Civitali sculptures. Gradually, her life leads her to understand that sometimes, one doesn’t need to know what to do…but does know what not to do.
Ms. Gordon’s characters are all self-reflective and contemplative with the trappings of a good life…and yet with happiness as elusive. (Two of the questions posed in a couple of these stories are what is happiness and is it important?) These are fine novellas.
In the eponymous The Liar’s Wife, the opening story, Jocelyn is a wealthy, sheltered and anxious dowager, “the child who wept when the swings were taken down for the winter.” Into her carefully ordered life suddenly enters her first husband, Johnny, an Irish neer-do-well, a self-created man with an oversized love of life. Through her interaction with the down-and-out Johnny, she realizes, “If love casts out fears, does it follow that fear casts out love?” And she finally realizes that “without Johnny she wouldn’t have known, really, who she was. Because he had taught her who she was not.”
The two sandwiched stories – Simone Weil in New York and Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana” are similar in that both are focused on ordinary students who interact with these renowned yet very flawed individuals. And, each deals in its own way with the early years of World War II and America’s blindness about the impending horrors. In the first, Genevieve – a student of Ms. Weil – recognizes that “The times demand of those who live through them certain acts, gestures, and understandings that they would not have come to in ordinary times.” Similarly, Bill, who feels indelibly and permanently marked by Dr. Mann, recalls“The waking was a shock, a laceration, but it was one we needed. His words lanced the infection of our refused to understand who we were”.
The last novella, Fine Arts, weaves these themes together, along with themes that those who are familiar with Mary Gordon’s past works, particularly Spending, will recognize: the arts, the joys and pitfalls of faith, the search for self. Theresa Riordan, an attractive young scholarship student, nurtured by Milwaukee nuns, is ill-prepared for the larger world – her married lover, and eventually, her affluent much older mentor who collects Matteo Civitali sculptures. Gradually, her life leads her to understand that sometimes, one doesn’t need to know what to do…but does know what not to do.
Ms. Gordon’s characters are all self-reflective and contemplative with the trappings of a good life…and yet with happiness as elusive. (Two of the questions posed in a couple of these stories are what is happiness and is it important?) These are fine novellas.
July 23, 2014
Review also found at http://kristineandterri.blogspot.ca/2...
I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. The expected publication date is August 5 2014. As this is four novella in one I will review each story separately
The Liars Wife
I had a little bit of a difficult time with the opening story. I found it extremely wordy and that it took a while to get to any real kind of point. The main character was not really likeable and seemed to have all sorts of emotional issues that stemmed from nothing.
The story did pick up when we were introduce to her ex-husband (the liar) and became a little more interesting. We learn about his live life to fullest attitude which is a stark contrast to Joss' outlook on life. We also learn about his lies and that there is no malicious intention behind them.
Ultimately this story was about acceptance of what life throws at you and making the most of it. While interesting at points it was just an average read for me
Simone Weil in New York
I was hoping I would enjoy the second story more than the first but alas it was not meant to be. This one provoked more frustration than anything. I did not understand Genevieve's hero worship of Simone. I get that she was her childhood hero as her teacher but as an adult I would have felt that if she learned anything from her it was free will and thought. Instead she went along with everything Simone said like a lost puppy. There were no characters to identify with or invest in although Joe was as close as it gets.
Again this story was too wordy that the actual story gets lost. So far it will be tough to see this book through but only two more novella's so I will try my best to keep an open mind and enjoy the last two.
Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana
This was in my opinion another wordy story about nothing. The main character talked like he was enlightened when he was in fact not. I found myself getting annoyed as I proceeded through the story
Overall Impression
I put this book down before reading the last story. I feel it was doing the author an injustice to continue as I clearly did not enjoy this read and since my rule of thumb is if I read it I review it I simply stopped. While some people may enjoy this type of read I found it full of eloquently strung together words and lacking any real substance. None of the characters were interesting nor believable and the stories were simply boring. I hate to give a not so favorable review however this simply was not for me.
I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. The expected publication date is August 5 2014. As this is four novella in one I will review each story separately
The Liars Wife
I had a little bit of a difficult time with the opening story. I found it extremely wordy and that it took a while to get to any real kind of point. The main character was not really likeable and seemed to have all sorts of emotional issues that stemmed from nothing.
The story did pick up when we were introduce to her ex-husband (the liar) and became a little more interesting. We learn about his live life to fullest attitude which is a stark contrast to Joss' outlook on life. We also learn about his lies and that there is no malicious intention behind them.
Ultimately this story was about acceptance of what life throws at you and making the most of it. While interesting at points it was just an average read for me
Simone Weil in New York
I was hoping I would enjoy the second story more than the first but alas it was not meant to be. This one provoked more frustration than anything. I did not understand Genevieve's hero worship of Simone. I get that she was her childhood hero as her teacher but as an adult I would have felt that if she learned anything from her it was free will and thought. Instead she went along with everything Simone said like a lost puppy. There were no characters to identify with or invest in although Joe was as close as it gets.
Again this story was too wordy that the actual story gets lost. So far it will be tough to see this book through but only two more novella's so I will try my best to keep an open mind and enjoy the last two.
Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana
This was in my opinion another wordy story about nothing. The main character talked like he was enlightened when he was in fact not. I found myself getting annoyed as I proceeded through the story
Overall Impression
I put this book down before reading the last story. I feel it was doing the author an injustice to continue as I clearly did not enjoy this read and since my rule of thumb is if I read it I review it I simply stopped. While some people may enjoy this type of read I found it full of eloquently strung together words and lacking any real substance. None of the characters were interesting nor believable and the stories were simply boring. I hate to give a not so favorable review however this simply was not for me.
September 10, 2014
4.5
Four novellas on the ethics of truth, lying, honesty and dishonesty. On personal levels. In the civic arena.
IN THE FIRST novella, “Liar’s Wife” the reader is brought into the introspection of a woman who has lived a comfortable life. Her children are grown and she is alone at one of the homes she and her husband own (two inherited and kept, the other a NYC apartment.) She is highly suspicious of a Frito-Lay deliver truck parked across the street, something not seen in this neighborhood.
“The doorbell’s ringing startled her. No one came to this house spontaneously; no one who knew anything about anything would ring the bell without a call first. The doorbell ringing at seven o’clock in the evening could only signal something wrong. An emergency. Her mind went first to her grandchildren. Then to Richard. A heart attack. A car accident. It was too late for Jehovah’s Witnesses. She walked quickly from the backyard to the front door, and with each step the two wods pressed into her brain: Something wrong. Something wrong.”
Being inside this woman’s mind was at times excruciating for me and I needed at times to force myself to focus upon it. She’s discerning and defensive. And when she answers the door, a marriage she walked away from fifty years earlier is brought back to her. She could not love a man who embellished upon the truth, omitted parts of truths, created wildly false stories about himself and others.
Gordon creates a palpable tension through Genevieve’s thoughts and the theme of falsehoods. And the story unfolded in a direction I would not have predicted. Loved, loved, loved the ending!
IN THE SECOND novella, “Simone Weil in New York” the lying theme is that of acting one way, but thinking another. The story begins with an encounter with Simone Weil in New York City, in October 1942. Simone Weil tutored Genevieve and her brother, who has cerebral palsy, in France approximately eight years earlier. Genevieve now in early twenties is married to an absent soldier, has a child, and cares for her brother. Because she is a people-pleaser, she keeps her true and conflicted thoughts to herself, making Weil comfortable enough in Genevieve’s company to confide certain things with her, allow Genevieve to touch her, and visit unannounced. I know little of Weil and will not surmise as to how she is presented in this story.
Again, Gordon spends a lot of time in the protagonist’s mind.
Like this: Weil says: “Genevieve, you are a very good friend.”
Genevieve thinks: She wants to say, No I am not. I am good not out of friendship but because I fear your disapproval as I did when I was a girl.
Or this thought: How wrong you are, Joe, she wants to say, but of course does not, because she will not betray her brother.
These are simple quotes, but the novella has deeper themes within it. Weil, an unconventional thinker, philosophizes on God, human suffering, inequality. She feels guilty about being in the states and not being active in doing her part in WWII Europe.
This is the story of two women, one who does not fit in because she aloof to the world around her, but honest about her thinking. The other, a woman who manages only too well, but keeps her true thoughts to herself. “Words will not serve. But she must do something. She must bring something to Mme. Weil. An offering.”
"THOMAS MANN IN GARY, INDIANA” is also set during the during WWII. In this novella, a young man's guilt over his budding sexuality and his “pursuit of happiness” are intensified through encounters with a couple who have fled Nazi Europe, and Thomas Mann, who is traveling America to speak of “truth, justice, civilization, democracy. In my purely aesthetically determined youth, it would never have occurred to me to deal in such terms…..Civilization is in retreat…. May America stand forth in an abandoned and ethically leaderless world as the strong and unswerving protector of the good and the godly in mankind…a country that perseveres in a faith which is sound and utterly necessary to life---faith in goodness, in freedom and truth, in justice and in peace.”
IN THE FOURTH STORY, “Fine Arts” the question of truth is that of discriminating between the real and the fake. A wealthy man on in his years worries of being cheated if he purchases an art piece. He was “unwilling to trust that kind of sentimentality in a dealer.” But Theresa, the young woman whose life story meanders a bit too much through this novella, unlike the other protagonists in these novellas speaks what she is thinking, “I think it’s beautiful. I think it’s wonderful. I think you should buy it” she “instantly regrets what she’d said” and apologizes for being rude. But he replies, “Believe me, my dear, I know rudeness when I encounter it. You were taken up by an idea, aroused by it. And what a rare thing that is. As a collector, I think a lot about rarity. And you are a rare person.”
Her rewards for this honesty go a bit over the top in this novella and the ending is, sadly, more a fairy tale and anything based in reality. Too bad. Until then I was thinking this book of novellas was one to be left with on a deserted island. One with which to have endless time to read and reread, analyze and savor passages passages. I was soooo impressed. Still, it could spark some interesting book discussions on the ethics of truth and lying, being real or being a fake. What is acceptable and what is not?
Four novellas on the ethics of truth, lying, honesty and dishonesty. On personal levels. In the civic arena.
IN THE FIRST novella, “Liar’s Wife” the reader is brought into the introspection of a woman who has lived a comfortable life. Her children are grown and she is alone at one of the homes she and her husband own (two inherited and kept, the other a NYC apartment.) She is highly suspicious of a Frito-Lay deliver truck parked across the street, something not seen in this neighborhood.
“The doorbell’s ringing startled her. No one came to this house spontaneously; no one who knew anything about anything would ring the bell without a call first. The doorbell ringing at seven o’clock in the evening could only signal something wrong. An emergency. Her mind went first to her grandchildren. Then to Richard. A heart attack. A car accident. It was too late for Jehovah’s Witnesses. She walked quickly from the backyard to the front door, and with each step the two wods pressed into her brain: Something wrong. Something wrong.”
Being inside this woman’s mind was at times excruciating for me and I needed at times to force myself to focus upon it. She’s discerning and defensive. And when she answers the door, a marriage she walked away from fifty years earlier is brought back to her. She could not love a man who embellished upon the truth, omitted parts of truths, created wildly false stories about himself and others.
Gordon creates a palpable tension through Genevieve’s thoughts and the theme of falsehoods. And the story unfolded in a direction I would not have predicted. Loved, loved, loved the ending!
IN THE SECOND novella, “Simone Weil in New York” the lying theme is that of acting one way, but thinking another. The story begins with an encounter with Simone Weil in New York City, in October 1942. Simone Weil tutored Genevieve and her brother, who has cerebral palsy, in France approximately eight years earlier. Genevieve now in early twenties is married to an absent soldier, has a child, and cares for her brother. Because she is a people-pleaser, she keeps her true and conflicted thoughts to herself, making Weil comfortable enough in Genevieve’s company to confide certain things with her, allow Genevieve to touch her, and visit unannounced. I know little of Weil and will not surmise as to how she is presented in this story.
Again, Gordon spends a lot of time in the protagonist’s mind.
Like this: Weil says: “Genevieve, you are a very good friend.”
Genevieve thinks: She wants to say, No I am not. I am good not out of friendship but because I fear your disapproval as I did when I was a girl.
Or this thought: How wrong you are, Joe, she wants to say, but of course does not, because she will not betray her brother.
These are simple quotes, but the novella has deeper themes within it. Weil, an unconventional thinker, philosophizes on God, human suffering, inequality. She feels guilty about being in the states and not being active in doing her part in WWII Europe.
This is the story of two women, one who does not fit in because she aloof to the world around her, but honest about her thinking. The other, a woman who manages only too well, but keeps her true thoughts to herself. “Words will not serve. But she must do something. She must bring something to Mme. Weil. An offering.”
"THOMAS MANN IN GARY, INDIANA” is also set during the during WWII. In this novella, a young man's guilt over his budding sexuality and his “pursuit of happiness” are intensified through encounters with a couple who have fled Nazi Europe, and Thomas Mann, who is traveling America to speak of “truth, justice, civilization, democracy. In my purely aesthetically determined youth, it would never have occurred to me to deal in such terms…..Civilization is in retreat…. May America stand forth in an abandoned and ethically leaderless world as the strong and unswerving protector of the good and the godly in mankind…a country that perseveres in a faith which is sound and utterly necessary to life---faith in goodness, in freedom and truth, in justice and in peace.”
IN THE FOURTH STORY, “Fine Arts” the question of truth is that of discriminating between the real and the fake. A wealthy man on in his years worries of being cheated if he purchases an art piece. He was “unwilling to trust that kind of sentimentality in a dealer.” But Theresa, the young woman whose life story meanders a bit too much through this novella, unlike the other protagonists in these novellas speaks what she is thinking, “I think it’s beautiful. I think it’s wonderful. I think you should buy it” she “instantly regrets what she’d said” and apologizes for being rude. But he replies, “Believe me, my dear, I know rudeness when I encounter it. You were taken up by an idea, aroused by it. And what a rare thing that is. As a collector, I think a lot about rarity. And you are a rare person.”
Her rewards for this honesty go a bit over the top in this novella and the ending is, sadly, more a fairy tale and anything based in reality. Too bad. Until then I was thinking this book of novellas was one to be left with on a deserted island. One with which to have endless time to read and reread, analyze and savor passages passages. I was soooo impressed. Still, it could spark some interesting book discussions on the ethics of truth and lying, being real or being a fake. What is acceptable and what is not?
August 26, 2014
Mary Gordon has written four novellas, all with the theme of self-awareness; finding who one's true self is and experiencing angst and turmoil in the process.
The first novella, The Liar's Wife, is about 72 year old Jocelyn. She is spending the weekend at her family home in Connecticut while her husband is in Cape Cod. She hears a knock on her door, and when she opens it, there is Linnet, the girlfriend of her first husband, Johnny Shaughnessy, who she hasn't seen or thought of in fifty years. Seeing Johnny causes her to reminisce about his love of life and high spirits. However, she also is reminded of the many lies he told in order to make things more interesting. These lies bothered Jocelyn so much that she had to end their marriage. It appears that he hasn't stopped lying. Despite his lying ways, she realizes that "she would have been less had she never known him." Knowing him taught her who she couldn't be, by giving her "the glimpse of something offered, something she knew she couldn't hold on to."
Simone Weil in New York is a novella about an actual historical figure. Simone Weil was a real person known for her left-wing activism, her teaching, writing, and mystical christianity. She died of tuberculosis when she was thirty-four years old. She is fictionalized in this story. Genevieve is a young mother living in New York City during WWII. Unexpectedly, she sees Ms. Weil and they reconnect, which leaves Genevieve with conflicting feelings. Genevieve has an infant son who she cares for, along with caring for her brilliant brother, Laurent, who has cerebral palsy. Ms. Weil ingratiates herself into their lives. Genevieve struggles with confusion about self. She sees herself as a grown woman but in the presence of Ms. Weil, her former teacher who she once idolized, she feels childlike again. Ms. Weil's ideas confuse and energize Genevieve. She comes to the conclusion that she will never understand Ms. Weil, who both attracts and repulses her at the same time.
The third novella is entitled Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana. It is 1939 and FDR is president, the Nazis have taken over Germany, and parts of the United States are cocooned in their naiveté and ignorance about the world's events. Gary, Indiana is a segregated community where blacks and jews live in their own ghettos. Bill Morton, seventeen years old, attends the white high school and is a good boy. He is chosen by his school to introduce the great writer, Thomas Mann (fictionalized for the purposes of this novella), who will be visiting them and giving a talk. Mann's talk has a huge impact on Bill, allowing him to understand that both good and evil exist. "I hadn't even noticed the evil of living in a restricted town, going to a segregated school." This story is told by Bill when he is in his nineties, and the powerful words that Mann spoke during his high school years still reverberate within him and define who he wants to have been.
Fine Arts is about a graduate student, Theresa Riordan, who has received a grant to study sculpture in Lucca, Italy. She had been having an affair with her advisor which he ends once Theresa reaches Lucca. Theresa comes from a background that has prevented her from truly experiencing childhood. She is both serious and naive. The object of her studies is a fairly obscure artist named Civitali. Her seriousness prompts her to act in a way that is alien to her prior experience of self.
The four stories make for a wonderful look at who each character is versus who they think they are. The reader gets to look into the minds of four very interesting people and share with them, their evolving sense of self. Gordon appears to be very influenced by Plato's writings, especially his story of the cave and the implications of what is considered real.
The first novella, The Liar's Wife, is about 72 year old Jocelyn. She is spending the weekend at her family home in Connecticut while her husband is in Cape Cod. She hears a knock on her door, and when she opens it, there is Linnet, the girlfriend of her first husband, Johnny Shaughnessy, who she hasn't seen or thought of in fifty years. Seeing Johnny causes her to reminisce about his love of life and high spirits. However, she also is reminded of the many lies he told in order to make things more interesting. These lies bothered Jocelyn so much that she had to end their marriage. It appears that he hasn't stopped lying. Despite his lying ways, she realizes that "she would have been less had she never known him." Knowing him taught her who she couldn't be, by giving her "the glimpse of something offered, something she knew she couldn't hold on to."
Simone Weil in New York is a novella about an actual historical figure. Simone Weil was a real person known for her left-wing activism, her teaching, writing, and mystical christianity. She died of tuberculosis when she was thirty-four years old. She is fictionalized in this story. Genevieve is a young mother living in New York City during WWII. Unexpectedly, she sees Ms. Weil and they reconnect, which leaves Genevieve with conflicting feelings. Genevieve has an infant son who she cares for, along with caring for her brilliant brother, Laurent, who has cerebral palsy. Ms. Weil ingratiates herself into their lives. Genevieve struggles with confusion about self. She sees herself as a grown woman but in the presence of Ms. Weil, her former teacher who she once idolized, she feels childlike again. Ms. Weil's ideas confuse and energize Genevieve. She comes to the conclusion that she will never understand Ms. Weil, who both attracts and repulses her at the same time.
The third novella is entitled Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana. It is 1939 and FDR is president, the Nazis have taken over Germany, and parts of the United States are cocooned in their naiveté and ignorance about the world's events. Gary, Indiana is a segregated community where blacks and jews live in their own ghettos. Bill Morton, seventeen years old, attends the white high school and is a good boy. He is chosen by his school to introduce the great writer, Thomas Mann (fictionalized for the purposes of this novella), who will be visiting them and giving a talk. Mann's talk has a huge impact on Bill, allowing him to understand that both good and evil exist. "I hadn't even noticed the evil of living in a restricted town, going to a segregated school." This story is told by Bill when he is in his nineties, and the powerful words that Mann spoke during his high school years still reverberate within him and define who he wants to have been.
Fine Arts is about a graduate student, Theresa Riordan, who has received a grant to study sculpture in Lucca, Italy. She had been having an affair with her advisor which he ends once Theresa reaches Lucca. Theresa comes from a background that has prevented her from truly experiencing childhood. She is both serious and naive. The object of her studies is a fairly obscure artist named Civitali. Her seriousness prompts her to act in a way that is alien to her prior experience of self.
The four stories make for a wonderful look at who each character is versus who they think they are. The reader gets to look into the minds of four very interesting people and share with them, their evolving sense of self. Gordon appears to be very influenced by Plato's writings, especially his story of the cave and the implications of what is considered real.
August 20, 2014
"The Liar's Wife" is a collection of four novellas by the talented Mary Gordon. I have been a fan of Ms. Gordon's writing for many years so I was enthusiastic about this new offering, and I was not disappointed!
In the first novella, "The Liar's Wife", we are treated to the internal emotional state 72 year old Jocelyn is experiencing when her first love/husband, Johnny, shows up unannounced after 50 years. What is always composed, Jocelyn, "supposed" to do, to think, and most mystifyingly - to FEEL?
She recalls their very brief marriage and her life with him (a musician) in Dublin the 1960s. So what does Johnny, a smooth-talking, charming liar what from Jocelyn at this time in their lives?
Next we have a novella with a "real life" character interacting in a fictional setting, in "Simone Weil in New York". In this story, fictional Genevieve is the protagonist. She was once an adoring pupil of Mlle. Weil's, in France, but now nine years later in 1942 they both find themselves in New York City. Weil was a fairly famous metaphysical philosopher and by all accounts - a strange genius. The story gives us a slice of her life as seen through Genevieve's eyes and is a character study of Genevieve as she reconnects with her one-time idol.
In "Thomas Mann in Gary Indiana" we have another story containing a real person. Seventeen year old Bill Morton, has been chosen to meet and introduce Thomas Mann in 1939 as the Nobel Laureate travels the US heartland. I thoroughly enjoyed this story of young Bill, beset with puberty and battling the demons that torture young men (spoiler alert: sex). Bill discovers in his own town both anti-semitism and segregation and faces the ideals of courage for the first time in his life. Bill is in his 90s as he is narrating this loss-of-innocence story thus lending the story the benefit of time and history and an adult perspective.
A working knowledge of Thomas Mann's oeuvre will be a bonus to enjoying this story, but it's definitely not a must.
The final novella is "Fine Arts", in which we are introduced to Theresa Riordan who is in Lucca, Italy after having been eloquently dumped by her much older, married, Art History professor. She is there to work on her dissertation on the Italian sculptor Civitali. In Lucca she meets Gregory Allard who is a rich octogenarian who owns several Civitali pieces. He sweeps Theresa into his world and the novella explores the relationships between art objects and their beholders, between art and feelings of happiness, and between the "value" of art and commerce.
November 14, 2014
Just finished, don't really know what I think about it at this time. I am not a real fan of short stories.
June 7, 2018
I admire Mary Gordon's writing, but this book is her greatest achievement so far. The four novellas are reminiscent of Henry James in describing interactions between Europeans and Americans, in one case a Frenchwoman who has lived in America rather than a person born in the United States.
The story "Simone Weil in New York" is extraordinary. It shows Weil, having gone to New York for her parents' sake, desperate to get back to Europe to work to oppose Hitler. The people she interacts with are Genevieve, a Frenchwoman who has married an American Jew who is fighting in Europe, and Genevieve's brother, a mathematical genius who is severely disabled. Genevieve also has a small child. Weil's kind of goodness for the sake of the larger public and rudeness to individuals is contrasted with Genevieve's daily struggle to take care of her family. The contrast between the different kinds of goodness makes a fascinating story.
All four stories deal with the uneasy interactions of people with different kinds of goodness. "Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana" shows European exile teachers cramming a well-meaning teenager with knowledge so he can be his school's representative to introduce Mann, who has come to tell Americans that they must fight the evil that is Hitler. The teachers make it clear that the boy's family and the people in his whole milieu are mediocrities, a revelation that makes his life difficult.
This is one of the best books I've read this year. I can't recommend it strongly enough. The tension between different kinds of goodness is more thought-provoking than the traditional struggle between good and evil.
The story "Simone Weil in New York" is extraordinary. It shows Weil, having gone to New York for her parents' sake, desperate to get back to Europe to work to oppose Hitler. The people she interacts with are Genevieve, a Frenchwoman who has married an American Jew who is fighting in Europe, and Genevieve's brother, a mathematical genius who is severely disabled. Genevieve also has a small child. Weil's kind of goodness for the sake of the larger public and rudeness to individuals is contrasted with Genevieve's daily struggle to take care of her family. The contrast between the different kinds of goodness makes a fascinating story.
All four stories deal with the uneasy interactions of people with different kinds of goodness. "Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana" shows European exile teachers cramming a well-meaning teenager with knowledge so he can be his school's representative to introduce Mann, who has come to tell Americans that they must fight the evil that is Hitler. The teachers make it clear that the boy's family and the people in his whole milieu are mediocrities, a revelation that makes his life difficult.
This is one of the best books I've read this year. I can't recommend it strongly enough. The tension between different kinds of goodness is more thought-provoking than the traditional struggle between good and evil.
March 18, 2022
DNF
Just read the first story - not my cup of tea!
Just read the first story - not my cup of tea!
June 18, 2016
An Intriguing Quartet
One of the characters in this collection of four long stories or short novellas (around 70 pages each) has devised a means of communicating with the handicapped that involves the person selecting the one object from a set of four that does not match the other three. I find myself applying the principle to Mary Gordon’s stories, each more enjoyable than the one before, whose unity I can sense but not exactly define. So here goes.
Might it be the title story, with which the book opens? It is the only one whose ostensible action involves characters in their seventies rather than their twenties, although the important things happen in flashback to fifty years earlier. Jocelyn is a timid woman in late middle-age, living alone in Connecticut while her husband is away. She gets a surprise visit from her first husband, Johnny Shaughnessy, an Irish singer she had loved madly in her twenties. At first it seems there is no comparison between her manicured life and that of this superannuated troubadour and his blowsy partner, playing the bar circuit as “Dixie and Dub.” But by the time the story is over, the moral balance will have shifted, and beautifully so.
Or is it “Simone Weill in New York” that is the odd one out? Like all the others, it features a young person in her twenties learning lessons that will change the rest of her life, but here the main focus is elsewhere. Genevieve is a Frenchwoman married to a New York doctor. On Riverside Drive, in 1942, she runs into the philosophy teacher from her high school in Le Puy, Simone Weill. Unwell, ill-dressed, and eccentric, the Christian-Jewish philosopher and humanitarian is desperately trying to get parachuted back into occupied France. But although Weill is the secondary character, it is the fascination with her life and the religious and moral questions that she raises that make the main reasons for reading this extraordinarily accomplished and subtle story.
The title character in “Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana” turns out to be little more that a catalyst. What makes the story different from the rest is that its protagonist/narrator, Bill Morton, is a man. He is selected by the faculty of the Horace Mann High School in Gary to host the (fictitious) visit of the great German writer in 1939, when he spoke about the dangers of the Nazi regime. But it is less what Mann said (on other occasions, if not this one) that is of interest, so much as Bill’s personal and political awakening, which will affect the rest of his long life.
The twentyish protagonist in the final story, “Fine Arts,” is a doctoral student in Art History at Yale visiting Lucca in Italy in connection with her proposed dissertation on the sculptor Matteo Civitali. A naïve innocent in the ways of the world, Theresa Riordan has been basically nurtured by nuns until arriving at Yale. Her delayed coming-of-age story takes several interesting turns before reaching its unexpected ending, which clearly sets it apart from the other three, which close, as it were, with ellipses rather than a period or exclamation point. But Theresa’s experiences of Italy were so like my own as an art-historical student fifty years earlier that I was rooting for her all along, and more than ready to cheer at the end.
One of the characters in this collection of four long stories or short novellas (around 70 pages each) has devised a means of communicating with the handicapped that involves the person selecting the one object from a set of four that does not match the other three. I find myself applying the principle to Mary Gordon’s stories, each more enjoyable than the one before, whose unity I can sense but not exactly define. So here goes.
Might it be the title story, with which the book opens? It is the only one whose ostensible action involves characters in their seventies rather than their twenties, although the important things happen in flashback to fifty years earlier. Jocelyn is a timid woman in late middle-age, living alone in Connecticut while her husband is away. She gets a surprise visit from her first husband, Johnny Shaughnessy, an Irish singer she had loved madly in her twenties. At first it seems there is no comparison between her manicured life and that of this superannuated troubadour and his blowsy partner, playing the bar circuit as “Dixie and Dub.” But by the time the story is over, the moral balance will have shifted, and beautifully so.
Or is it “Simone Weill in New York” that is the odd one out? Like all the others, it features a young person in her twenties learning lessons that will change the rest of her life, but here the main focus is elsewhere. Genevieve is a Frenchwoman married to a New York doctor. On Riverside Drive, in 1942, she runs into the philosophy teacher from her high school in Le Puy, Simone Weill. Unwell, ill-dressed, and eccentric, the Christian-Jewish philosopher and humanitarian is desperately trying to get parachuted back into occupied France. But although Weill is the secondary character, it is the fascination with her life and the religious and moral questions that she raises that make the main reasons for reading this extraordinarily accomplished and subtle story.
The title character in “Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana” turns out to be little more that a catalyst. What makes the story different from the rest is that its protagonist/narrator, Bill Morton, is a man. He is selected by the faculty of the Horace Mann High School in Gary to host the (fictitious) visit of the great German writer in 1939, when he spoke about the dangers of the Nazi regime. But it is less what Mann said (on other occasions, if not this one) that is of interest, so much as Bill’s personal and political awakening, which will affect the rest of his long life.
The twentyish protagonist in the final story, “Fine Arts,” is a doctoral student in Art History at Yale visiting Lucca in Italy in connection with her proposed dissertation on the sculptor Matteo Civitali. A naïve innocent in the ways of the world, Theresa Riordan has been basically nurtured by nuns until arriving at Yale. Her delayed coming-of-age story takes several interesting turns before reaching its unexpected ending, which clearly sets it apart from the other three, which close, as it were, with ellipses rather than a period or exclamation point. But Theresa’s experiences of Italy were so like my own as an art-historical student fifty years earlier that I was rooting for her all along, and more than ready to cheer at the end.
October 10, 2014
“The Liar’s Wife” is only one of the four novellas in this book. Veteran writer Gordon has produced stories where the protagonists are all knocked out of their comfort zones and find themselves contemplating life changing moral issues.
In the first, the title story, a 70-some year old woman is surprised by the appearance of her ex-husband. They were only married a short time before she fled, unable to settle into a life in Ireland with a musician husband who, of course, lies continually. Her life has been comfortable; happy children, career she liked, good husband, three houses. His has been the opposite, but he feels he’s lived life to the fullest. Whose life has been better? Has one been a waste?
In “Simone Weil in New York” the protagonist is a young woman who was one of Weil’s students in France. Now married to an American doctor who is stationed in the Pacific Theater during WW 2, with a baby and living with her brother, she encounters Weil in the street. She is not happy to see her; she represents all that has been lost because of the war. As a student she had loved and revered Weil; now she feels a tangle of feelings. Weil feels an obligation to live as the poorest live; does that help anyone? Should Genevieve feel guilty for being safe in America instead of being part of the French Resistance? Can she break free of Weil’s philosophy?
The narrator in “Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana” is an old man, looking back on his life. The high point of his life was when, in high school, he was selected to present the visiting Thomas Mann to the school. Mann has left Germany because of the Nazi regime and is visiting the school to lecture on what is happening in Germany. Like Weil, Mann cannot enjoy his own freedom and success because of guilt over what is going on in his native country; this opens the high school boy’s eyes to the racism that is so casually accepted in America- so casually that no one ever really sees it.
My favorite story is the last one, “Fine Arts”. A college student who has been given a grant to go overseas to study the work of sculptor Citivali for her doctoral thesis. Theresa has had a hard life; her childhood was taken up with caring for a bed ridden father; her teens taken up with studying. Her one indulgence has been an affair with her married mentor, who is a self absorbed ass. Two of the sculptures that she wishes to study are in a private collection; the owner turns Theresa’s life upside down and completely reverses her situation.
All four protagonists wrestle with moral issues. Is what they are doing worthwhile? Are they wasting their lives? Is it all right to enjoy your life while others suffer? It sounds grim, but the stories are very engaging and thought provoking without being heavy. The prose is so… perfect… that it just leads you on into the stories.
In the first, the title story, a 70-some year old woman is surprised by the appearance of her ex-husband. They were only married a short time before she fled, unable to settle into a life in Ireland with a musician husband who, of course, lies continually. Her life has been comfortable; happy children, career she liked, good husband, three houses. His has been the opposite, but he feels he’s lived life to the fullest. Whose life has been better? Has one been a waste?
In “Simone Weil in New York” the protagonist is a young woman who was one of Weil’s students in France. Now married to an American doctor who is stationed in the Pacific Theater during WW 2, with a baby and living with her brother, she encounters Weil in the street. She is not happy to see her; she represents all that has been lost because of the war. As a student she had loved and revered Weil; now she feels a tangle of feelings. Weil feels an obligation to live as the poorest live; does that help anyone? Should Genevieve feel guilty for being safe in America instead of being part of the French Resistance? Can she break free of Weil’s philosophy?
The narrator in “Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana” is an old man, looking back on his life. The high point of his life was when, in high school, he was selected to present the visiting Thomas Mann to the school. Mann has left Germany because of the Nazi regime and is visiting the school to lecture on what is happening in Germany. Like Weil, Mann cannot enjoy his own freedom and success because of guilt over what is going on in his native country; this opens the high school boy’s eyes to the racism that is so casually accepted in America- so casually that no one ever really sees it.
My favorite story is the last one, “Fine Arts”. A college student who has been given a grant to go overseas to study the work of sculptor Citivali for her doctoral thesis. Theresa has had a hard life; her childhood was taken up with caring for a bed ridden father; her teens taken up with studying. Her one indulgence has been an affair with her married mentor, who is a self absorbed ass. Two of the sculptures that she wishes to study are in a private collection; the owner turns Theresa’s life upside down and completely reverses her situation.
All four protagonists wrestle with moral issues. Is what they are doing worthwhile? Are they wasting their lives? Is it all right to enjoy your life while others suffer? It sounds grim, but the stories are very engaging and thought provoking without being heavy. The prose is so… perfect… that it just leads you on into the stories.
September 23, 2015
Literary fiction does not fit the genre mold and often comes under fire for slow starts, slow pacing, and weak plot. That may be, but I prefer rich characterization and a story with a strong aha moment that dawns on me gradually or shocks me into a new understanding. The Liar's Wife is such a book. Of the four novellas, the first, for which the book is titled, and the last, "Fine Arts," are my favorites. True to life, in "The Liar's Wife" a mismatched couple hit the rocks, recriminations happen, and then a tender moment puts all things into perspective. In "Fine Arts," an academic has the requisite affair, demonstrates the appropriate passion for her subject of study, and then is driven by true passion to commit a crime that redefines her life. This is the stuff our lives are truly made of.
September 1, 2014
I loved Mary Gordon's short stories so much, but I was a little disappointed in this collection of 4 novellas. Nothing really wrong with them, just didn't resonate with me as much as the short stories did. The one I liked best was probably Fine Arts, about a young graduate student in Fine Arts, who is travelling in Italy, learning about herself via art and via the sometimes-puzzling people she meets. I liked Teresa as a character and, once again, I liked how Gordon naturally weaves subtle questions about faith into her stories. For example, the artist Teresa is studying created mostly religious art during the Renaissance, and Teresa questions whether she really understands the works, since (although educated by nuns) she is not a person of faith herself.
October 2, 2014
Variations on themes of innocence and experience, usually within a single character over time. There's a Jamesian aspect to several of the stories, such as Simone Weil in New York, where European experience encounters American innocence - altho in each story the main character tends to be the locus of contrast between younger and older selves. Often accompanied by beaucoup angst. The first story was the most intriguing, because it's not clear the narrator/main character learned anything about her own restrictive views and restricted life - but the reader certainly does. I almost didn't read any of the others after that one, because she seemed frustratingly obtuse - but I'm glad I did. Makes me want to read more Mary Gordon.
October 29, 2014
These were quite good. .. a bit of an echo in each of the 'wife' in the first - and that disturbed me a bit from time to time as I bumped into it. I'm not quite sure that the CHARACTERS were known by the end of each novella but the angst ..maybe it's not angst; I've just finished the book so I'll have to think on this - but that's good too. Perhaps its just Mary Gordon's motif for 'getting inside' her characters and I didn't follow her in!
At any rate, the framing of the stories absolutely held me for each of the four.
At any rate, the framing of the stories absolutely held me for each of the four.
September 7, 2014
Let me first say I am not normally a fan of short stories or novellas.
Mary Gordon could make me a convert. She gets to the core of the person she is writing about and made me relate to them- even though the characters in the novellas were not characters that I have anything in common with. The main characters gain self awareness and are changed by the circumstances they go through. They all go outside their comfort zone and learn from it. I will certainly read something by her again.
Mary Gordon could make me a convert. She gets to the core of the person she is writing about and made me relate to them- even though the characters in the novellas were not characters that I have anything in common with. The main characters gain self awareness and are changed by the circumstances they go through. They all go outside their comfort zone and learn from it. I will certainly read something by her again.
May 8, 2015
2.75 stars. In short, I liked the snappy language and odd plots, but they were just so damn literary: stuff is happening, but it's so mundane that you don't realize that stuff is happening. So maybe the book is more like life. Eh. Either way, I wasn't drawn in anymore after a while. I made it through the first story and really struggled through the rest.
October 8, 2014
I usually love every word she writes, but these stories...or novellas, didn't work for me. I don't write these reviews to guide public reading taste in any way. This is just a reminder to myself.
February 9, 2018
In all honesty, I did not finish this book. After three stories, my overall feeling was that everything was contrived. These stories were forced to be more than what they were.
November 27, 2014
Loved the last one best: Fine Arts. Brilliant.
November 17, 2014
With “The Liar’s Wife,” Mary Gordon proves her skill with the novella, a challenging literary genre and one of my favorites. Four stories, each written in the first person, tie the past to the present, America to Europe, protagonists wrestling with haunting questions, some regrets, demanding responsibilities. Often their thinking is challenged by the most unexpected incident. What I took away in the end is reflected in the song lyrics sung by a friend to Genevieve in the second novella, “Grab your hat and get your coat.” Live your life.
“The Liar’s Wife” is the first novella and scaffolds the remaining three. Sipping a glass of wine in her deceased mother’s back yard in New Canaan, Connecticut, one of her three homes, is Jocelyn, 72 years old, happily married to Richard, a lawyer, retired from her position researching mosquitoes. Questions haunt her: “Where had it come from, this overriding lack of courage? This sense the worst could always happen?”…“What if the world is not a good place? What if the worst came to the worst?”
Then, she frets about the Frito-Lay truck parked across the street. Within a few minutes, her first husband, Johnny Shaunessey , now 75 years old, a man she has not seen for fifty years, is sitting in her living room with his larger than life girlfriend, Linnet. What Jocelyn has never understood is that Joe and his friends believed they were sharing stories, sometimes to protect, sometimes to enlarge life, in their two years together in Dublin, but Jocelyn always perceived them harshly as lies, personal affronts, ultimately causing her to return home to America, to a safe life. Further, and perhaps, sadly, Jocelyn believed her life was more a function of luck…”What was called a life. A life of meaning.” Everything in her life had been carefully chosen, carefully tended. Contained.”
The night with Johnny and Linnet, filled with music and story, illuminates a singular truth about Johnny who states, “I’ve always loved life,” a foreign concept to Jocelyn who can only admit to being “happy,” a muted state at best she realizes. Johnny, ill with lung cancer, has no regrets about their short life together, and she realizes she does not either because “He had taught her who she was not…He lifted the heavy branches that were covering her life…sealed up understanding,” a quiet epiphany for Jocelyn.
The second novella, “Simone Weil in New York,” begins in 1942, a year into WWII for Americans but years into the flight from oppression for so many Europeans. Genevieve Levy, raised and schooled in France, now married to a doctor serving in the South Pacific, the mother of 13 month old Aaron and caretaker of her brother, Laurent, his body trapped by cerebral palsy and a brilliant professor at Columbia University, has a chance meeting with her former, formidable teacher, Simone Weil. Now, nine years later after being Genevieve’s teacher, Simone has fled Europe with her parents to live in New York with her older brother, Andre, a great mathematician. Imbedded seamlessly within this fictional narrative are Simone Weil’s strong personal philosophy, her protests against what is unfair or unjust, her fasts and deprivations, matching practice to her beliefs.
Over the next few months, Genevieve is alternately angry with Simone, protecting her from criticism, avoiding her, frustrated with her protests against ordinary life, and wanting her to understand this new American life. Exhausted from her responsibilities caring for her child and brother, worried her husband will not return from war, she struggles that she has lost her idealism, her understanding of love and beauty and all that is important in the world defined by her teacher, Simone Weil.
Trained by Weil nine years before in France to speak the truth always, Genevieve acknowledges she didn’t at a crucial moment. She laments to Laurent, feeling untrue to herself and her teacher. “I don’t know how to speak about it, how to understand it. What is the right way to describe what she said.” Laurent counsels, “You did not cause hurt.”
The third novella, “Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana,” is narrated by 90 year old Bill Morton, a retired doctor, about the greatest, most important day in his life, when, as a 17 year old high school student, he introduced Thomas Mann, the great German writer, to his home town in 1939 and lifted a veil on his life.
The small details about his teachers, his mother, his home life, reveal in many ways a typical, bright high school student and then, his epiphany about his provincial life, prejudice, and “that America was not the world and that we, as Americans, had no right to the lulling music which was not of the spheres, not even of the sirens, but the low hum of cave dwellers who didn’t even have the wit to see the shadows.” This, then, drives Bill’s entire life.
The fourth novella, “Fine Arts,” is told by twenty five year old Theresa Riordan, most recently a doctoral student at Yale, influenced by her life in Milwaukee focused on the care of her paralyzed father and her progressive education by a group of nuns who understood “Theresa had promise.”
Theresa’s affair with a Yale professor, her mentor and advisor, a married man, is the universal story of an affair that can only end one way. Two thirds of the novella describe Theresa’s journey to Lucca, literally and metaphorically, in search of a dissertation topic on Matteo Civitali, a 15th century sculptor. What I love best about Gordon’s writing is when she lends her laser focus on small moments, tiny details of the feel of marble, the carved fingers “suggesting resignation, supplication, assent,” metaphors for her characters.
Theresa then meets Gregory Allard, a wealthy collector of art, including Civitali, and his 40 something son, Ivo, and his friends, culture and anti-culture. Their stories are not at all predictable and will turn the reader’s thinking around and around again. Theresa’s life continues to surprise the reader after she leaves Lucca to visit her beloved nuns again and Maura, her best friend from childhood, now an E.R. nurse in Tortola, and receives an extraordinary gift she believes might actually be a burden.
At the end she struggles when you have nothing and then “everything,” what do you do? Her epiphany is simple advice: “And then you’ll do the next thing, and then something else.”
“The Liar’s Wife” is the first novella and scaffolds the remaining three. Sipping a glass of wine in her deceased mother’s back yard in New Canaan, Connecticut, one of her three homes, is Jocelyn, 72 years old, happily married to Richard, a lawyer, retired from her position researching mosquitoes. Questions haunt her: “Where had it come from, this overriding lack of courage? This sense the worst could always happen?”…“What if the world is not a good place? What if the worst came to the worst?”
Then, she frets about the Frito-Lay truck parked across the street. Within a few minutes, her first husband, Johnny Shaunessey , now 75 years old, a man she has not seen for fifty years, is sitting in her living room with his larger than life girlfriend, Linnet. What Jocelyn has never understood is that Joe and his friends believed they were sharing stories, sometimes to protect, sometimes to enlarge life, in their two years together in Dublin, but Jocelyn always perceived them harshly as lies, personal affronts, ultimately causing her to return home to America, to a safe life. Further, and perhaps, sadly, Jocelyn believed her life was more a function of luck…”What was called a life. A life of meaning.” Everything in her life had been carefully chosen, carefully tended. Contained.”
The night with Johnny and Linnet, filled with music and story, illuminates a singular truth about Johnny who states, “I’ve always loved life,” a foreign concept to Jocelyn who can only admit to being “happy,” a muted state at best she realizes. Johnny, ill with lung cancer, has no regrets about their short life together, and she realizes she does not either because “He had taught her who she was not…He lifted the heavy branches that were covering her life…sealed up understanding,” a quiet epiphany for Jocelyn.
The second novella, “Simone Weil in New York,” begins in 1942, a year into WWII for Americans but years into the flight from oppression for so many Europeans. Genevieve Levy, raised and schooled in France, now married to a doctor serving in the South Pacific, the mother of 13 month old Aaron and caretaker of her brother, Laurent, his body trapped by cerebral palsy and a brilliant professor at Columbia University, has a chance meeting with her former, formidable teacher, Simone Weil. Now, nine years later after being Genevieve’s teacher, Simone has fled Europe with her parents to live in New York with her older brother, Andre, a great mathematician. Imbedded seamlessly within this fictional narrative are Simone Weil’s strong personal philosophy, her protests against what is unfair or unjust, her fasts and deprivations, matching practice to her beliefs.
Over the next few months, Genevieve is alternately angry with Simone, protecting her from criticism, avoiding her, frustrated with her protests against ordinary life, and wanting her to understand this new American life. Exhausted from her responsibilities caring for her child and brother, worried her husband will not return from war, she struggles that she has lost her idealism, her understanding of love and beauty and all that is important in the world defined by her teacher, Simone Weil.
Trained by Weil nine years before in France to speak the truth always, Genevieve acknowledges she didn’t at a crucial moment. She laments to Laurent, feeling untrue to herself and her teacher. “I don’t know how to speak about it, how to understand it. What is the right way to describe what she said.” Laurent counsels, “You did not cause hurt.”
The third novella, “Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana,” is narrated by 90 year old Bill Morton, a retired doctor, about the greatest, most important day in his life, when, as a 17 year old high school student, he introduced Thomas Mann, the great German writer, to his home town in 1939 and lifted a veil on his life.
The small details about his teachers, his mother, his home life, reveal in many ways a typical, bright high school student and then, his epiphany about his provincial life, prejudice, and “that America was not the world and that we, as Americans, had no right to the lulling music which was not of the spheres, not even of the sirens, but the low hum of cave dwellers who didn’t even have the wit to see the shadows.” This, then, drives Bill’s entire life.
The fourth novella, “Fine Arts,” is told by twenty five year old Theresa Riordan, most recently a doctoral student at Yale, influenced by her life in Milwaukee focused on the care of her paralyzed father and her progressive education by a group of nuns who understood “Theresa had promise.”
Theresa’s affair with a Yale professor, her mentor and advisor, a married man, is the universal story of an affair that can only end one way. Two thirds of the novella describe Theresa’s journey to Lucca, literally and metaphorically, in search of a dissertation topic on Matteo Civitali, a 15th century sculptor. What I love best about Gordon’s writing is when she lends her laser focus on small moments, tiny details of the feel of marble, the carved fingers “suggesting resignation, supplication, assent,” metaphors for her characters.
Theresa then meets Gregory Allard, a wealthy collector of art, including Civitali, and his 40 something son, Ivo, and his friends, culture and anti-culture. Their stories are not at all predictable and will turn the reader’s thinking around and around again. Theresa’s life continues to surprise the reader after she leaves Lucca to visit her beloved nuns again and Maura, her best friend from childhood, now an E.R. nurse in Tortola, and receives an extraordinary gift she believes might actually be a burden.
At the end she struggles when you have nothing and then “everything,” what do you do? Her epiphany is simple advice: “And then you’ll do the next thing, and then something else.”
March 17, 2017
This was marvelous. These four novellas taught me more about what fiction can and should do than I think maybe any short stories ever have. These are not stories of bangs and whistles and car chases and shoot-em-ups. These are stories describing the process of how you come to learn something, how an interaction with one person can change your mind about deeply-held beliefs. These are stories that reflect the kinds of very important things most of us wrestle with on an ongoing basis. How do we decide who we are and what we think? How do we decide what is important to us in life, what lights up all our curiosity and excitement, and what do we do if those things are in conflict with each other? Because these sorts of conflicts in ourselves are not represented on TV or in most movies, I think we dismiss them as being unexciting, unimportant, un-story-worthy. But Mary Gordon reminds us here that this is the stuff that is crucial to our very definition of our selves.
Which novella is my favorite? The title story, "The Liar's Wife"--about a woman whose long-ago first husband unexpectedly appears on her doorstep with his new girlfriend and take her out to dinner, and who without ever trying to do so, convince her to re-examine and change her definitions about the difference between lies and truth--stole my heart. Won me over. Made my jaw drop.
I was less sanguine at first about "Simone Weil in New York," because it starts out all weird, beginning with a series of one-line paragraphs which seemed affected and a little showy. But once I read past those, I understood exactly how they were part of the main character's internal landscape. The story is about Simone Weil's brief time spent in New York City at the end of her life, as seen through the eyes of a woman who used to be a student of hers when she was a girl. Gordon gets exactly right that mixture of once-upon-a-time complete admiration for someone you revered as a child, combined with the adult awareness that this person has feet of clay, and the confused reaction when other people who you think would be annoyed by the feet-of-clay behavior respond other than you expected, with respect. The former-student protagonist now has a baby and cares for her disabled brilliant brother, and she is forced to grapple with the question: what does she revere now? What choices does she make, what thing(s) or people does she put first now, and what would her girlhood self think of her, what does her girlhood idol think of her for those choices? This novella gets the nuances of so many elements of the protagonist's relationship and opinions of her former teacher so exactly right, I was stunned by this too.
The third novella, "Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana," is the one that gripped me the least. It could be because, in my excitement, I read it immediately after the previous one and all in one sitting, and so didn't give it the time to settle in and allow it to bloom in its entirety. This one is told from a man's perspective, looking back on his adolescence when Thomas Mann was going to come to his school, and he was selected to give the introductory speech. This meant at the time he was supposed to be a "good" kid, but he did not feel "good," and he was of course not at all sure what he was supposed to say in his speech. The two teachers mentoring him in this were Jewish, and this was 1939 in America, and Jews were not allowed to go into certain parts of his town. He reflects about the difference between mind and body, how supposedly he was chosen to give the speech because of his mind but really it was because of his body, because he looked a certain way and came across a certain way, as the all-American ideal young man. What ended up being more important to him was the speech he heard Thomas Mann give to his school, how it electrified him and resonated with him for years afterward, such that it inspired him to write though not send many letters to Mann. It turns into another story of an ordinary person's brush with greatness, how that is a complicated combination of awe and bitterness.
The fourth story may be my favorite. This one is about Theresa, a graduate student, going to Italy to view the sculptures of a medieval sculptor, just after the end of an affair she's had with her married professor and mentor. (You see the continuing thread of the awareness of feet of clay.) But the best part of this novella, the thing that makes it glow and live, and the parts that I want to read over and over again, are the parts that Mary Gordon always has done best -- the ekphrastic sections. When Theresa is sitting in front of the sculptures and that artwork is being described to us, not only what the figures look like and how they are made, but how they affect Theresa, the emotions and desires they awaken her, how in love she is with what they tell her, how this is what makes her content, how she wishes she could stay and stay in the presence of these sculptures and have this be her life, to simply look at them, take them in, absorb them -- these passages are absolutely marvelous.
This is the same Mary Gordon who wrote Spending, I realized to my astonishment. What I loved best about that novel was how she wrote about the paintings. What I was less interested in, in Spending, was the whole money-relationship question, which seemed like trying to be too flashy, too showy. Here, what she writes about the sculptures is similar to how she wrote about those paintings then, but it is more luminous, more stunning, absolutely beautiful. What surrounds the main character's interactions with the sculptures is again a love story, but this time it doesn't go well, this time she gains another mentor, and this time, Gordon's writing and her perspective on everything is more mature, more complex, richer, full of more depth and life and fullness. The ending of this novella is similarly nicely tied up as Spending was and therefore I found the end disappointing (other readers may find it satisfying), but because of those passages when Theresa is with the sculptures and what they enliven in her, I am in awe of this novella's achievement.
But I know because Mary Gordon has taught me so, I ought not to revere her with the expectation of perfection in all things; I know she is still human. And that is an incredible thing to be.
Which novella is my favorite? The title story, "The Liar's Wife"--about a woman whose long-ago first husband unexpectedly appears on her doorstep with his new girlfriend and take her out to dinner, and who without ever trying to do so, convince her to re-examine and change her definitions about the difference between lies and truth--stole my heart. Won me over. Made my jaw drop.
I was less sanguine at first about "Simone Weil in New York," because it starts out all weird, beginning with a series of one-line paragraphs which seemed affected and a little showy. But once I read past those, I understood exactly how they were part of the main character's internal landscape. The story is about Simone Weil's brief time spent in New York City at the end of her life, as seen through the eyes of a woman who used to be a student of hers when she was a girl. Gordon gets exactly right that mixture of once-upon-a-time complete admiration for someone you revered as a child, combined with the adult awareness that this person has feet of clay, and the confused reaction when other people who you think would be annoyed by the feet-of-clay behavior respond other than you expected, with respect. The former-student protagonist now has a baby and cares for her disabled brilliant brother, and she is forced to grapple with the question: what does she revere now? What choices does she make, what thing(s) or people does she put first now, and what would her girlhood self think of her, what does her girlhood idol think of her for those choices? This novella gets the nuances of so many elements of the protagonist's relationship and opinions of her former teacher so exactly right, I was stunned by this too.
The third novella, "Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana," is the one that gripped me the least. It could be because, in my excitement, I read it immediately after the previous one and all in one sitting, and so didn't give it the time to settle in and allow it to bloom in its entirety. This one is told from a man's perspective, looking back on his adolescence when Thomas Mann was going to come to his school, and he was selected to give the introductory speech. This meant at the time he was supposed to be a "good" kid, but he did not feel "good," and he was of course not at all sure what he was supposed to say in his speech. The two teachers mentoring him in this were Jewish, and this was 1939 in America, and Jews were not allowed to go into certain parts of his town. He reflects about the difference between mind and body, how supposedly he was chosen to give the speech because of his mind but really it was because of his body, because he looked a certain way and came across a certain way, as the all-American ideal young man. What ended up being more important to him was the speech he heard Thomas Mann give to his school, how it electrified him and resonated with him for years afterward, such that it inspired him to write though not send many letters to Mann. It turns into another story of an ordinary person's brush with greatness, how that is a complicated combination of awe and bitterness.
The fourth story may be my favorite. This one is about Theresa, a graduate student, going to Italy to view the sculptures of a medieval sculptor, just after the end of an affair she's had with her married professor and mentor. (You see the continuing thread of the awareness of feet of clay.) But the best part of this novella, the thing that makes it glow and live, and the parts that I want to read over and over again, are the parts that Mary Gordon always has done best -- the ekphrastic sections. When Theresa is sitting in front of the sculptures and that artwork is being described to us, not only what the figures look like and how they are made, but how they affect Theresa, the emotions and desires they awaken her, how in love she is with what they tell her, how this is what makes her content, how she wishes she could stay and stay in the presence of these sculptures and have this be her life, to simply look at them, take them in, absorb them -- these passages are absolutely marvelous.
This is the same Mary Gordon who wrote Spending, I realized to my astonishment. What I loved best about that novel was how she wrote about the paintings. What I was less interested in, in Spending, was the whole money-relationship question, which seemed like trying to be too flashy, too showy. Here, what she writes about the sculptures is similar to how she wrote about those paintings then, but it is more luminous, more stunning, absolutely beautiful. What surrounds the main character's interactions with the sculptures is again a love story, but this time it doesn't go well, this time she gains another mentor, and this time, Gordon's writing and her perspective on everything is more mature, more complex, richer, full of more depth and life and fullness. The ending of this novella is similarly nicely tied up as Spending was and therefore I found the end disappointing (other readers may find it satisfying), but because of those passages when Theresa is with the sculptures and what they enliven in her, I am in awe of this novella's achievement.
But I know because Mary Gordon has taught me so, I ought not to revere her with the expectation of perfection in all things; I know she is still human. And that is an incredible thing to be.
July 8, 2020
My favorite of these 4 novellas is "The Liar's Wife". It concerns the poignant reunion of a former husband and wife. She left him because she could not tolerate his constant lying. Now many years later she has led a sedate, controlled life, but her ex-husband joyfully proclaims that he has always loved life. Did she make the right choice? "Simone Weil in New York" The title character has fled the Nazis with her parents because they would not leave without her. Her goal in life is to get back to Europe to fight the Nazis. I found her annoying and did not really understand what we readers were to learn from the ending... "Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana". A high school boy has the opportunity to introduce Mann at an assembly and is inspired by his message against fascism. The boy grows up but never seems to act on the inspiration of Thomas Mann. Again I was uncertain what I was supposed to learn from the story. " Fine art " A young woman who refuses to see fine art as a commodity and appreciates it for its beauty. This was my second favorite, but it seemed to ramble on too long. Mild recommendation except for the title story. Kristi & Abby Tabby
August 25, 2021
Mary Gordon's writing is highly evocative in this collection of four novellas with unique and intelligent plots. She describes not just the physical settings, but the internal lives of her characters, how they see themselves, almost as imposters, and how they are changed by their relationships with others. Themes related to truth and lies show up in each novella, with an ongoing question of whether one is always to be valued over the other. In retrospect I think I liked the first, "The Liar's Wife" best of the four, but I also liked the way that in "Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana" a 90-year-old man tenderly regards himself as a naive 17-year-old boy, as he thinks back. I'm generally more interested in novels than short stories, but the novellas were a good way to try out Gordon's work without committing to a longer novel.
February 28, 2020
I've had The Liars Wife in my kindle since 2014. Trying to get around to reading some of older books that I haven't read yet. The Liars Wife is 4 novellas which deal with American and European people and themes. I liked 2 of the novellas and found the stories interesting. Especially the first one where a women is dealing with her ex husband who is a habitual liar. And the last novella about an Art student in Italy.
March 20, 2021
Short Stories
Each novella, in my opinion, was too lengthy. Too drawn out. Very interesting characters, especially re: Thomas Mann and Genevieve Weil. I always love learning new things so in that respect in am happy to have read these novellas.
Interestingly, my least favorite was Liars Wife.
Each novella, in my opinion, was too lengthy. Too drawn out. Very interesting characters, especially re: Thomas Mann and Genevieve Weil. I always love learning new things so in that respect in am happy to have read these novellas.
Interestingly, my least favorite was Liars Wife.
September 1, 2021
The title novella is worth the purchase of this book. I have read--and reread--it four times. Why? to study the exquisite structure and prose, to experience the physicality of the setting, the sheer capture of a certain moment in a life, and the poignancy of the unexpected visitation of the deep past. In a word, this is mastery.
September 29, 2021
The four novellas by Mary Gordon develop the interior lives of the narrators in their imaginary meetings with famous people, in one--Simone Weil, in another, Thomas Mann-- and the self-examination and growth of the protagonists. Written with her usual insight and sensitivity that she showed in Final Payments, this is a good book!
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