The Republic of Love

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: "As a baby, Tom Avery had twenty-seven mothers. So he says. That was almost forty years ago." As opening paragraphs go, if this one doesn't make you want to read on, then nothing will. I started reading this in bed one Sunday morning and didn't get up until it was finished.

Fay McLeod wakes up one morning knowing she no longer loves the man in the bed beside her, with whom she has lived for five years. Truth be known, he no longer loves her, either; their relationship had just slipped into complacency and joint commitments. But alone, she finds she really is just one half of an incomplete couple. Where does one find love? How does one remain in love? After all, as the title suggests, it's everyone's right to experience love.

Fay is close to her family; her parents, brother, his family, and her sister. She has many friends, mainly through her absorbing work as a folklorist with a special interest in mermaids. Her work links her to the past, and to fantasy - could she be using that to escape reality?

Before reaching forty, Tom Avery has been divorced three times. He hadn't chosen partners very wisely, but at least he's remained friendly with two of his ex-wives and they are part of his extensive social circle. Without actually vowing to never marry again, he knows he isn't good marriage material, and spends most Friday nights attending singles meetings, supposedly to learn new skills, but in reality to check out availability of potential partners. He also concentrates his energies on friends, associates and his work as the popular host of a midnight to dawn radio program.

Considering his circle, and Fay's circle contained so many people in common, it was surprising they'd never met. However, a chance encounter at the birthday party of Fay's nephew where he'd come to collect his godson and she'd come to deliver a present on the eve of a European study tour, leads to a strong mutual attraction. So strong, that after only a walk home (they lived across the street from each other) in the company of an eight year old boy, Tom tracks down her address in Europe and professes his love, a madly passionate airletter posted before allowing himself to think better of it.

What is love? In this book, Carole Shields has used none of the artifice apparent in later novels; it's just a beautifully written exploration of love, finding it, keeping it, regaining it and allowing yourself to yield to it. Around Tom and Fay, finely developed secondary characters go though their own love crises - the path of love is hardly ever smooth. It is a hopeful, heart-warming and satisfying novel. Plus you find out quite a lot about Winnepeg, mermaids and late-night radio.

Several years ago, an elderly friend recommended Carol Shields. Recently I started with "Larry's Party", which announced it was by the author of "The Stone Diaries", which in turn proclaimed to be by the author of "The Republic of Love". Since these books seem to be their own best recommendations, I'm now going to take the advice of "The Republic of Love" and look even further back into her list for "Swann" and "The Orange Fish".

Rating:
Summary: Romantics - take heart!
Review: "As a baby, Tom Avery had twenty-seven mothers. So he says. That was almost forty years ago." As opening paragraphs go, if this one doesn't make you want to read on, then nothing will. I started reading this in bed one Sunday morning and didn't get up until it was finished.

Fay McLeod wakes up one morning knowing she no longer loves the man in the bed beside her, with whom she has lived for five years. Truth be known, he no longer loves her, either; their relationship had just slipped into complacency and joint commitments. But alone, she finds she really is just one half of an incomplete couple. Where does one find love? How does one remain in love? After all, as the title suggests, it's everyone's right to experience love.

Fay is close to her family; her parents, brother, his family, and her sister. She has many friends, mainly through her absorbing work as a folklorist with a special interest in mermaids. Her work links her to the past, and to fantasy - could she be using that to escape reality?

Before reaching forty, Tom Avery has been divorced three times. He hadn't chosen partners very wisely, but at least he's remained friendly with two of his ex-wives and they are part of his extensive social circle. Without actually vowing to never marry again, he knows he isn't good marriage material, and spends most Friday nights attending singles meetings, supposedly to learn new skills, but in reality to check out availability of potential partners. He also concentrates his energies on friends, associates and his work as the popular host of a midnight to dawn radio program.

Considering his circle, and Fay's circle contained so many people in common, it was surprising they'd never met. However, a chance encounter at the birthday party of Fay's nephew where he'd come to collect his godson and she'd come to deliver a present on the eve of a European study tour, leads to a strong mutual attraction. So strong, that after only a walk home (they lived across the street from each other) in the company of an eight year old boy, Tom tracks down her address in Europe and professes his love, a madly passionate airletter posted before allowing himself to think better of it.

What is love? In this book, Carole Shields has used none of the artifice apparent in later novels; it's just a beautifully written exploration of love, finding it, keeping it, regaining it and allowing yourself to yield to it. Around Tom and Fay, finely developed secondary characters go though their own love crises - the path of love is hardly ever smooth. It is a hopeful, heart-warming and satisfying novel. Plus you find out quite a lot about Winnepeg, mermaids and late-night radio.

Several years ago, an elderly friend recommended Carol Shields. Recently I started with "Larry's Party", which announced it was by the author of "The Stone Diaries", which in turn proclaimed to be by the author of "The Republic of Love". Since these books seem to be their own best recommendations, I'm now going to take the advice of "The Republic of Love" and look even further back into her list for "Swann" and "The Orange Fish".

Rating:
Summary: A modern day love story at its finest!
Review: "Sheilds instills confidence in us all that love at first sight is still a possibility. In fact, The Republic of Love forces us to ask the question, "Is there really any other kind of love?"

Few authors have been able to create characters that so effortlessly experience the many facets of moden love. Allow yourself to drift back and forth inside the hearts and minds of Fay and Tom. You will not easily forget them."

Rating:
Summary: 3 dimensional characters easy to empathize with.
Review: A friend told me that this book was disappointing to her in comparison to "The Stone Diaries" - I find this hard to imagine, I loved the story, the characters, the setting, the realness and can hardly wait to read more of Shield's books. The job choices for the characters, mermaid researcher and dj, made a charming combination, not your normal 9 - 5 world!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: After "The Stone Diaries" this story is a true disappointment. Slow, miniaturistic, shallow. "The Stone Diaries" on the other hand was one of the best books I ever came across.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: After "The Stone Diaries" this story is a true disappointment. Slow, miniaturistic, shallow. "The Stone Diaries" on the other hand was one of the best books I ever came across.

Rating:
Summary: A decent read
Review: I thought the book was not in the same league as Stone Diaries. It was a nice love story with a happy, predictable ending. Perfect for a weekend read.

Rating:
Summary: A decent read
Review: I wanted to crawl into this book and pull it down on top of me. It is whimisical homage to romantic love and a wonderful illumination of the underpinnings of community. It's one of those novels I read every couple of years, just for kicks.

Rating:
Summary: Required reading for romantics.
Review: I wanted to crawl into this book and pull it down on top of me. It is whimisical homage to romantic love and a wonderful illumination of the underpinnings of community. It's one of those novels I read every couple of years, just for kicks.

Rating:
Summary: A triumphant exploration and affirmation of modern love.
Review: In 1995 Carol Shields won the Pulitzer Prize for THE STONE DIARIES, a masterful novel that put her name at the forefront of the literary world. Three years earlier she gave us THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE, a bewitching novel that deserves as much claim and attention as its more celebrated successor. In this novel, set in a close-knit Canadian community so small that its citizens reluctantly find themselves recycling schoolmates as lovers and ex-spouses as friends, Shields tackles an ambitious task. She takes a subject as elusive, time-honored, and--oh, let's be honest--EXHAUSTED as love and infuses it with plenty of invigorating, modern insight and a great deal of graceful wit.

The novel centers around Fay, a commitment-shy folklorist specializing in mermaid studies and Tom, a late night disc jockey with no fewer than three failed marriages in his hapless past. Each struggles to achieve admission to the republic of love without relinquishing too much hard-won independence. Their small town is one where enviable and ill-fated relationships alike put themselves on involuntary display. This provides each character with a chance to scrutinize the connections that dictate the paths lives will follow as well as the opportunity to examine the tiny tugs of the human heart that disclose truths of existence. In Shields' capable hands the subject of love becomes neither one of pure romanticism nor one of unadulterated cynicism. Employing love as a central theme is something almost every writer has attempted at one time or another, often with little success. In this case, Shields ultimately and triumphantly handles it with the delicacy, tenderness, and passion of someone with the rare ability to see clearly into the core of the human heart and the even rarer ability to describe what she finds there.