The Monday Book – No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister

Posted on by
Reply

Guest review by Janelle Bailey, avid reader/ever-an-educator/lifelong learner

No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister

Quite honestly, everything Erica Bauermeister has ever written/published I have devoured and enjoyed, but for maybe liking just one of her books a little less than I have loved every other. I must simply say that her writing, her stories, her characters, her themes, well…they truly tend to push all of the right buttons for my avidly reading always heart and soul. Bauermeister “gets me” like very few other authors so consistently have, and this is simply one more piece of evidence.

There were numerous times during my reading of No Two Persons when Bauermeister began an idea and was articulating something that I have, myself, thought…and gosh, if I couldn’t have–and so many times–finished the paragraph for her, as she wrote exactly what I was already thinking…but articulately, poetically, beautifully and all the while constructing this gorgeous novel. Maybe that strikes you as odd, but in no way am I saying that she writes a predictable book or anything like that; this reality did not do even an iota of deterring me from loving the entire book. I am trying to say that we can, apparently, finish each others’ sentences, or so closely share similar thoughts, that while that may sound creepy, it is not, and just makes me feel like we are, well…on the same page.

Bauermeister told this entire story in such a way that she made me feel like I was right there with her all the while, that she understands some big and small ideas exactly as I do. Therefore, a gorgeous irony contained within is the entire point of the book’s title and a central idea, that, according to Madame Swetchine, a well-educated Russian woman–fairly unknown and often not quoted for writing this when Edmund Wilson often is–“No two persons ever read the same book, or saw the same picture.” But man, am I eager to discuss this book with others to see how they felt.

In this beautifully written, heart-deep and heady novel, there are many, many characters. Some readers will not like, let alone appreciate so deeply as I do, this fact. How can you write a book called No Two Persons and addressing Swetchine’s comment without including numerous persons? The onus–honor of meeting them, I say–is on the reader to follow the thread, and oh, boy is it ever a sweet and silvery metallic one, one that will absolutely beautify “the read” and make of the experience a fabulous tapestry, richly woven with all of these characters who have met or read Alice’s book and its main character. I will always remember only its title and how valuable that character is, that everyone needs to meet him but likely no two persons grab the exact same experience in reading. Yet everyone gets exactly what they need.

Not long before reading this book–and truthfully, a friend walked into a bookstore with me on my birthday, and said–as we talked about those we knew and those we did not as we encountered them: “I’d like you to pick out a book for me to buy you for your birthday.” Oh. My. Goodness. The GIFT of this statement. I did not have to waffle much, having this title already on hold at the library, as to which I would choose, though I certainly enjoyed the anticipation and looked at many, many others first. That was some of the joy of this gift!

But it wasn’t only that.

I was having a discussion with a dear and near neighbor who reads nearly as much and as lovingly as I do…and just a month ago. We could talk for hours about good books and what we are reading and what we want to read and what we have previously read for HOURS…and easily do. So when our paths cross, we often do not get started–LOL–but try to just share what we’re reading right now, and yet then we’ve started. Right?

After coming home from my birthday with this new book in hand, we ran into each other, and found ourselves sharing that we’ve each read every one of Bauermeister’s books (I for sure have, but I think she had, too). We shared how much we’d been struck by the earliest ones, compelling us to be so eager to and then read the rest. And then, no lie: the next day, when I–and I don’t always–looked at my Facebook memories, I found a memory from ten years ago that indicated that The School of Essential Ingredients was the 15th book I had read/reviewed that year–2013 (This was my 67th book this year, and I’m so pleased with my improvement!)–and then reads: “The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. Wow. This is MY kind of romance, S__ C__ (a friend who had, I believe, recommended it)…beautifully written, twining together story and food, experiences and dreams. Fifty Shades of Gray has NOTHING on this. Find me a guy who “gets” this story and all of its ingredients, please.” I took a screenshot of the FB memory (she’s not on FB) and it and send it to my neighbor, as she and I had JUST had this conversation, and we both indicated we should share the book with our husbands.

That’s just a bit more of the craziness, because ten years ago TODAY (exactly one month and two days after posting that on Facebook in 2013), I met in person for the first time a guy I’d met on match.com. We met in the middle and enjoyed getting to know each other over a first date that included a couple of beers and some frozen pizza prepared for us by the bartender in a pretty sticky-floored bar with pretty clean bathrooms. Two days later we went on our second date, and that lasted a record thirteen hours, including a farmer’s market, an al fresco brunch/lunch, nine holes of golf (my concession at his wish/request), sushi all the way through the green tea ice cream (his trade off/adventure), and finished with me telling him in one more location nearby (the sushi place had no room for us to stay) one of my favorite life stories (which, of course, is all about a book!). And then, just two weeks more than eight years ago…I married him.

And MAYBE if he knows that the neighbor is reading the book, too, he’ll somehow be game to read this one. It’s not the murder-mystery like he most enjoys, but man: if we could, in this case, read the same book and discuss how similarly and differently our two persons feel about the book…well, that would be pretty darned neat.

Puiu

Posted on by
2

When I started adjuncting at UVa Wise, the office next door belonged to a Sociology professor named Puiu. He came over to say hello and showed me around the building. Over the next months, I got to know Puiu not only as a nice guy, but as a brilliant statistician.

He came to my rescue while I was getting my MPH, spending three hours one afternoon explaining regression and means uses, patiently, over and over again, until I could recite the basics if not quite understand them. He’s one of the reasons I passed biostatistics. His kind, grandfatherly voice, his careful repetition of things and his teaching method of “here’s what you need to know” or “here’s how this works” based on whether my eyes were glazed or confused, his laughter when I tried very hard to get it right and his encouragement of what little pieces I had grasped as building blocks to the rest: they were incentives to do something I literally hated. I didn’t care about biostatistics but wanted Puiu to think I was smart because he was so smart.

Puiu came to our bookstore a couple of times, and as he told me during a biostats session, “I have fallen in love with your husband.” He and Jack started a bromance. They could talk European politics for hours—and did. Many a night they closed the bookstore sitting on the front porch, drinking and talking into the dark.

We often held international nights at the bookstore, and Puiu agreed to do one on his home country of Romania. He and his girlfriend brought desserts and drinks from his homeland (she was from New York), and he set up a slide show for the assembly.

It was then that we learned that he had been part of the occupying force in the Romanian capital building in 1989, fighting for the revolution. He pointed to the window where he had been stationed, showed us the angle from which he had been firing, explained why he had been there and what the whole thing was about. Then he said something that has haunted me ever since.

“Here we are, twenty years later, and everything in Romania has a different name and operates the same. In the same way as we fought against that summer. Nothing is different. It was for nothing. Oh, we believed it, at the time. We were young, we were idealistic, we would change the world. We would fight for our cause, we would die for it, to bring democracy to Romania.”

A teenager asked, “Did you kill anyone when you were shooting?” The assembly froze. Puiu shrugged. His girlfriend stepped forward and offered desserts at the back table. The group dispersed quickly to eat and chat.

I didn’t know whether to apologize for the poor taste of the child’s question, but after the event Puiu sat on the porch with Jack and me and his lady. And he said, as if continuing a conversation, “I saw a man fall. He didn’t get up. I think it was me. It was not worth it. Everything has a new name and it all operates in the same way as before. Do not—” and here he looked straight at me; I don’t know why— “do not ever let someone tell you, if only we overthrow this, if only we can change this one thing, then utopia is there. Violence for idealism is not strategy. It is a trick for the new dictator.”

I nodded, we drank. Puiu doesn’t have any fingernails on his right hand. I never asked, and he never offered to talk about that.

When people talk about divided America, I think about quiet, gentle Puiu, who killed a man and lost his fingernails for a cause he believed in but that didn’t believe in him. And I pray for wisdom.