Category Archives: book reviews

THE MONDAY BOOK: The Truth about Lorin Jones, by Alison Lurie

Posted on by
Reply

This is an odd book, and a compelling one. It was published in 1988, which I am reliably informed by industry insiders makes it ANCIENT.

But it remains one of my favorite return-to reads. It’s about an art historian named Polly Alter who is writing a biography of painter Lorin Jones. Alter wants Jones to be the victim of male injustice, handled badly by her art-critic husband, suppressed by the glass ceiling, etc. etc. But as she seeks out people who knew Jones, Alter finds more and more complicating factors that remind Alter and the reader that people are never simple, or easy to capture. Or even, sometimes, all that easy to love.

And that’s why I like this book so much – Alter’s trying to capture Lorin Jones, and Lurie is capturing Alter and the other characters (some of whom have appeared in other Lurie novels). I love the way Lurie writes characters; they talk differently from each other; they come from different moral perspectives; their agendas are complicated and shifting and don’t just serve as plot devices. Reading The Truth About Alison Lurie is like diving into a writing workshop about characterization and dialogue.

The ending of this book (no, I won’t put a spoiler in here) remains one of my all-time favorites. Stephen King said about writing that life is ambivalent, so why shouldn’t writing be. But the way Lurie handles ambivalence, with a bit of humor and a great deal of compassion, has stuck with me since high school (when I first read Truth).

It’s a good novel for curling up with on a winter’s day, and it’s a good intro to how Lurie writes. I admit to not liking her other books as well as this one (even her feminist fairy tale collections!) but that’s okay. If this was the only thing she’d ever written, it would have been legacy enough.

Hidden Pleasures in the Night

Posted on by
3

One of the coolest things about running a bookstore is the nighttime raids. On any given evening, when the shop is closed and Jack and I head downstairs to our bedroom den, one of us might say, “Oh, I finished my book.” Thus begins a pleasant twenty minutes of discovery.

Jack and I take turns minding the store, so while we each have a really good idea of inventory, things are likely to come in on the other’s watch that we don’t yet know about. Trolling the shelves brings happy surprises. “Oh, I didn’t know we had the latest Sarah Allen!” Or “Hmm, a book about building fake ship docks and air bases during World War II.”

The little gems sit on our shelves waiting for us to traverse a section, not straightening, not searching, just browsing. It is such a pleasure to browse one’s own bookstore. And that “you can’t judge a book by its cover” thing? Hah. Yes you can. You can tell what’s targeting women – hello gorgeous ballgowns or period dresses with the wearer’s head not shown on the cover–and what’s marketed toward lit lite readers, covers edged in a dignified gilt frame, or photos of faraway cities and characters splashed behind a new author’s name.

A gorgeous photo, the judicious use of color, a drawing where a second glance reveals a second meaning: these are guaranteed to make me flip the book and read the blurb. If I’m not hooked by then, I do the random test taught me by a browsing customer years ago. Open to page 123 and read it. If the author’s writing is personally appealing, take the book downstairs. If not, there are 35,ooo more to browse.

I don’t think this would work if we didn’t live here, as we’re too absent-minded to remember to bring the books back once we’ve read them. And of course, if someone wants something, we have to bring it up from the den. I once sold a book Jack was reading from right off the nightstand, removing his bookmark and swearing later I didn’t remember seeing it. (Don’t tell him; he still doesn’t know I did that.)

Yeah, it’s a business. But when the main lights go out, and the relaxed evening hunt for something to read begins, it’s pure hedonistic happiness to live in a bookstore.