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Adjacent Lives
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 19, 2025
Harold Brodkey's wife wrote two novels; this was her first one.
What is interesting about a very important person in Brodkey's life is the complete lack of information on her. I was also surprised that no one was reading this book. Well, until I read it.
Adjacent Lives is a plot-driven romance novel, and everyone is having an affair. That's really about it. Natalie (Ellen) is a translator and gets into a romantic relationship with Tom (Brodkey?), her professor.
This was published a few years before these two got married, so there is no objective evidence that it is autobiographical beyond the fact that Ellen allegedly worked as a translator in real life (no proof of this beyond what people say in articles). There are only a few photos of her, an interview with Michael Silverblatt that I can no longer find promoting This Wild Darkness, and these two novels.
There is nothing really quotable or anything I will ponder.
How He Saved Her is dedicated to Mr. Brodkey, and the main protagonist is Nora, who is a very familiar name in his realm. But I will read that when I have forgotten all of this generally useless information until I reference this again.
Fingers crossed next time.
What is interesting about a very important person in Brodkey's life is the complete lack of information on her. I was also surprised that no one was reading this book. Well, until I read it.
Adjacent Lives is a plot-driven romance novel, and everyone is having an affair. That's really about it. Natalie (Ellen) is a translator and gets into a romantic relationship with Tom (Brodkey?), her professor.
This was published a few years before these two got married, so there is no objective evidence that it is autobiographical beyond the fact that Ellen allegedly worked as a translator in real life (no proof of this beyond what people say in articles). There are only a few photos of her, an interview with Michael Silverblatt that I can no longer find promoting This Wild Darkness, and these two novels.
There is nothing really quotable or anything I will ponder.
How He Saved Her is dedicated to Mr. Brodkey, and the main protagonist is Nora, who is a very familiar name in his realm. But I will read that when I have forgotten all of this generally useless information until I reference this again.
Fingers crossed next time.
April 9, 2021
Niet uitgelezen. Was een aanrader van mijn vrouw (allé, niet écht, ze vond wel dat ik het een kans moest geven). Tegen pagina vijftig zijn ze met elkaar naar bed gegaan, zei ze, als je het dan nog niet goed vindt, beter wordt het niet. Zo gezegd, zo gedaan.
November 11, 2020
"Adjacent Lives" was Ellen Schwamm's first book. It tells the story of Natalie and Tom, two married people who start an affair. Tom is an art historian who offers free public lectures (it's never quite clear how he makes a living; he's not independently wealthy) which Natalie's been attending for years. She's attracted to him without admitting it to herself, which impels her to stay in the back of the class, till her late arrival one day forces her to sit down in the front and brings her to Tom's attention. Pretty soon the attraction is mutual, and gradually, with ever-decreasing resistance from Natalie, they fall into their affair.
Natalie comes from an immigrant Hungarian family; her grandmother is dying through the first half of the book. Her only other blood relative is her uncle Laszlo, who's writing his autobiography; Natalie, a professional translator competent in several languages, is translating it for him. Her husband Gregory is a somewhat distant but basically decent guy, a computer engineer, whose main deficiency, for Natalie, is that he's just too logical and lacking soul, for want of a better word. They have two teenage sons.
Tom's wife Barbara is very unhappy and tries to assuage her sadness through a series of affairs, about which Tom learns only after his own has begun. (He had his suspicions, however.) Their daughter is a shadowy figure, never actually present; all we really hear about her is that Tom adores her.
As time passes and a series of tragedies afflict Natalie's life, she first draws closer to Tom, abandoning herself -- as much as she can -- to the affair, then draws away, till finally she ends it. Tom has convinced himself he's in love with her and wants to marry her -- something never really on the table.
The story here is that of two emotionally stunted people. Natalie cannot give herself completely to anyone, not Tom, certainly not Gregory; she comes closest, curiously, to opening up to Vivi, Laszlo's pregnant girlfriend, but withdraws just at the moment when an open conversation might have helped her sort her feelings out. Tom expresses passion for Natalie, but it turns out that his sexual drive is low, that he feels put upon when Barbara repents her affairs, recommits to her marraige, and demands bedtime with him. When Natalie finally leaves him for good, his reigning emotion seems to be relief.
I found the first 30-40 pages of "Adjacent Lives" hard going. Sentences seemed unrelated to each other. The characters were too much delineated by direct statement. Looking back, I think this move was intentional -- Natalie and Tom only start to come alive on the page once they have entered their illicit relationship.
It's notable that the lovers aren't punished in the usual ways. No one's marriage breaks up (indeed, Natalie and Gregory's is stronger by the end), they aren't discovered, the couple of people who know about it never betray the confidence. "Adjacent Lives" is, rather, a character study of two deeply flawed people whose lives do not converge but run, for a while, in parallel. Hence, it seems, the title.
Natalie comes from an immigrant Hungarian family; her grandmother is dying through the first half of the book. Her only other blood relative is her uncle Laszlo, who's writing his autobiography; Natalie, a professional translator competent in several languages, is translating it for him. Her husband Gregory is a somewhat distant but basically decent guy, a computer engineer, whose main deficiency, for Natalie, is that he's just too logical and lacking soul, for want of a better word. They have two teenage sons.
Tom's wife Barbara is very unhappy and tries to assuage her sadness through a series of affairs, about which Tom learns only after his own has begun. (He had his suspicions, however.) Their daughter is a shadowy figure, never actually present; all we really hear about her is that Tom adores her.
As time passes and a series of tragedies afflict Natalie's life, she first draws closer to Tom, abandoning herself -- as much as she can -- to the affair, then draws away, till finally she ends it. Tom has convinced himself he's in love with her and wants to marry her -- something never really on the table.
The story here is that of two emotionally stunted people. Natalie cannot give herself completely to anyone, not Tom, certainly not Gregory; she comes closest, curiously, to opening up to Vivi, Laszlo's pregnant girlfriend, but withdraws just at the moment when an open conversation might have helped her sort her feelings out. Tom expresses passion for Natalie, but it turns out that his sexual drive is low, that he feels put upon when Barbara repents her affairs, recommits to her marraige, and demands bedtime with him. When Natalie finally leaves him for good, his reigning emotion seems to be relief.
I found the first 30-40 pages of "Adjacent Lives" hard going. Sentences seemed unrelated to each other. The characters were too much delineated by direct statement. Looking back, I think this move was intentional -- Natalie and Tom only start to come alive on the page once they have entered their illicit relationship.
It's notable that the lovers aren't punished in the usual ways. No one's marriage breaks up (indeed, Natalie and Gregory's is stronger by the end), they aren't discovered, the couple of people who know about it never betray the confidence. "Adjacent Lives" is, rather, a character study of two deeply flawed people whose lives do not converge but run, for a while, in parallel. Hence, it seems, the title.
August 2, 2022
Recommended by Anne Tyler. Well-written and, eventually, emotionally engaging, but the characters irritated me.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews