Of Books and Mien

I just finished reading three rather extraordinary books, back to back, all of which were about love in one form or another.

The first was called “The Time Traveler’s Wife” about a man named Henry who has a strange medical condition: He cannot stay put in time. Without warning, he will suddenly wink out and find himself somewhere else, somewhen else. Since only his body can time travel, he can never take anything with him. He never knows where -or when- he will end up, or how long he will be there, only that he will arrive there totally naked. The “Wife” of the title is a woman named Clare, who first met Henry when she was 6 and he was in his late 30’s. He befriends this lonely little girl, and has her write down a series of dates which are the days and times he knows he will return, so that she can be there waiting for him with clothes and food, and they can resume their friendship for however long he can manage to stay put in that place and time. Through their friendship over the years, he helps the girl mature into the woman he will love and marry. When she turned 18, Henry tells her that they will not see each other for 2 years, but that when they do meet again, it will be in Chicago. At that pivotal meeting, Henry is 28 and Clare is 20, and Henry is meeting for the very first time the extraordinary woman he will love for the rest of his life. The book is written in such a way that Henry and Clare take turns telling parts of the story, which allows us to see certain key events from each character’s perspective, and to see into both characters’ inner lives. Clare’s narration unfolds in a fairly chronological manner, while Henry’s narration jumps, as he does, back and forth through time. Henry and Clare’s life might be perfectly ordinary for weeks or months at a time, and then one day without warning, she might walk into a room, and find a pile of Henry’s clothes and know that he had time traveled. Like Henry, she never knows where he has gone, how long he will be gone, when (and where) he will turn up again, what age he will be, or what condition he might be in, for he is constantly being dropped into the world seemingly at random, without warning or clothes, where he is forced to live by his wits until he can somehow find his way back to Clare. It was an amazing and beautifully written book, gemlike, intense and bittersweet, like Henry and Clare’s love. I was reminded of the chorus of the Joni Mitchel song Both Sides Now, “I’ve looked at love from both sides now . . .”

Then I read “The Elegance of the Hedgehog,” (English translation from French) which is the story of a widow who has been the concierge of a certain apartment building in Paris for 27 years, a peasant woman from the country by her own admission, with minimal formal education, but one whose secret passion is to continually expand her knowledge and understanding all the while hiding it from everyone like a secret identity — rather like Superman in his guise of Clark Kent. To the rich and important people who lived in her building, she is a nonentity, some nobody of a woman from the lower classes, when in actuality, she is a delightfully witty, erudite and discerning woman of stunning intelligence with a passion for the paintings of Vermeer, the films of Yasujiro Ozu, and the books of Leo Tolstoy. Unbeknown to her, the 12-year old daughter of one of the families living in her building is also very intelligent, intellectually precocious and a keen observer. However, the girl has come to the conclusion that life in the banal and superficial world she finds herself in is insupportable, littered as it is with her neurotic petite bourgeoise, ditz of a mother, her equally pretentious and neurotic older sister, and her father, the officious, high ranking civil servant, and she has determined that she will kill herself on her 13th birthday. In the meantime, she will draw what comfort she can from observing the world around her, writing about it in her journal and reading the Japanese manga whose worlds she finds so much more appealing than the one she now inhabits. The narration switches back and forth between these two characters, showing us their inner lives, their thoughts and feelings about the world they live in and the people who inhabit it, how they deal with the constraints their places in society place upon them. In fact, the title of the book comes from the way the girl describes the older woman: “(She) has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she’s covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog; a deceptively indolent little creature, fierce, solitary, and terribly elegant.” We are allowed to eavesdrop on the inner travelogue of both woman and girl as they navigate through their daily lives, and we explore through their eyes, the things people love, the things that touch them and move them. Then their hermetically sealed little worlds changes abruptly when one of the long-time tenants dies, and a retired Japanese gentleman, Mr. Ozu (only distantly related), purchases the now unoccupied apartment, has it extensively remodeled and moves in. Mr. Ozu quickly becomes aware that neither the lowly concierge nor the girl are what they seem and charms them both into opening their inner worlds to him. We are privileged to watch as kindred spirits meet cross the arbitrary boundaries of age, class, culture and nationality, and become better acquainted.

The third book is called “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.” The story is set in 1946. England has just emerged from the horrors of WWII, and a woman author, Julie, is trying to get on with her life. Her apartment in London was bombed during the Blitz (fortunately she was away visiting friends), and the thing she mourns most about its destruction is not the loss of her personal items and family keepsakes, but of all her treasured books. The story is told through a series of letters and telegrams exchanged between the main characters, and reading it is rather like discovering a box of old letters in a forgotten trunk in an attic and trying to piece together the lives of the people who wrote them. It begins with correspondence between Julie and her publisher, who is also a longtime friend and the brother of her best friend from school, regarding what her next book will be about. Then we come across a letter to Julie from a man who lives on Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Brittany, who found the address of her now nonexistent flat on the fly leaf of a second hand book Julie had reluctantly sold to make shelf space available for the man she thought she was going to marry. Miraculously, the letter was forwarded to her new address. The Channel Islander simply wanted to write to her and tell her how he had come across the book, how much he had come to treasure it, and how it had helped him to weather the German occupation of the Channel Islands during the War. Thus begins a correspondence that opens up a whole new world to Julie, not just in terms of subject matter for her next book, but in terms of starting life anew after the terrible experiences of the war. Through this collection of letters back and forth and how one correspondent leads to another, we come to examine love from many different angles — love of parent for child, love of friends, love of country, love of humanity, and the kind of love that can transcends time, place, and nationality. It is a beautifully written little book, like a small, nondescript wooden box that, when opened, reveals itself to be a music box with an exquisitely crafted little ballerina to dance to its delightful tune, and the tale of how the book came to have two authors is equally as moving as the book itself.

What sparked this orgy of reading? Shortly before Thanksgiving, we learned that my da has serious heart disease — in all four of his major coronary arteries, as well as an aortic aneurysm. However, because of other major health issues, surgery is not an option. It’s been hard enough for us having to watch my da being forced to give up the things he loves — music, cooking, reading, and interacting with his family and many friends — because of losing both his vision and hearing, and now we learn he has yet another serious health issue added to his burden. When two people’s lives are so intricately entwined as parent and child, there is no way you can separate them without tearing. It’s the Band Aid dilemma — It makes no difference whether it’s peeled off as slowly and as gently as possible, or yanked off all at once quickly; it’s going to hurt and there’s no way to lessen the pain. These last several years have been like having to stand helplessly by and watch someone you love dearly take a very bad, ultimately fatal fall in excruciatingly slow motion. I started the first book and read about half of it last weekend. This weekend, I finished it and the other two in marathon reading sessions over pots of tea, bread and jam, fruit and cheese, bundled up in bed and swathed with kitties. After having made it through the emotional mine field of what may well be our last Thanksgiving as an intact family, I just had to not think about everything for a while and get some mental distance between it and me, or it was going to swamp me.