Foreign Affairs

Rating:
Summary: Witty, poignant and charming...Lurie writes like a dream
Review: Alison Lurie's "Foreign Affairs" is quite the most witty, poignant and charming book I have read all year. Lurie had me in her spell right from the opening chapter where I was struck by her sureness of touch and intuitive understanding of the workings of the human heart. Her sense of humour is so honest and spot-on it's uncanny. She had me in stitches no sooner than Vinnie Miner boarded the plane and found to her dismay the unlikeliest of travelling companions seated next to her and determined to make conversation. Lurie's protagonists, Vinnie Miner and Fred Turner, are both living, breathing individuals everyone recognises. They aren't "types" but real people, not particularly distinguished or virtuous, with insecurities, but nevertheless people you feel compassion for. Vinnie and Fred are thrown together, sharing the same broad social milieu and developing romantic attachments with the unlikeliest of liasons. Of the two, Vinnie's story is by far the more convincing and successful. It is also heartwarming and touching. In contrast, Fred's liason is a little bland and one dimensional but saved by a dark twist at the end which I won't give away. "Foreign Affairs" has to be Lurie's masterpiece. It is a truly delightful and exceptional literary achievement by a novelist whose trademark is a graceful old school charm that's so rare to find these days. It richly deserves its Pulitzer Prize winning status and I would recommend it to anyone who reads to be moved and entertained.

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Summary: "Why is she being persecuted by transatlantic vulgarity?"
Review: American professors of literature Virginia Miner and Fred Turner are both in England to work. "Foreign Affairs" are not on the agenda, but that's exactly what happens. Virginia, or Vinnie as she prefers to be called, is single and 54. She's a confirmed Anglophile who finds an excuse to visit England at least once a year. This time, she's embarked on a major research project to catalogue "folk rhymes of schoolchildren". Vinnie--a seasoned traveler--likes to mingle with the natives, and she's secretly flattered when fellow American, retired sanitation engineer Chuck Mumson mistakenly assumes she's British. Vinnie is, at first, rather annoyed by Chuck when he keeps bothering her on the plane, but their paths accidentally cross again in London.

Fred Turner is a junior member of Vinnie's department. He's in England researching an 18th century author, but he's distracted and upset by the sudden angry separation from his wife. His inability to concentrate is hampering his work in the British Museum (known as the Bowel Movement or BM). Furthermore, Fred and his young American acquaintances are deeply disappointed in England--the climate, the natives, and the food. All in all, Fred expects to have a rather dreary time in England--but then he is introduced to popular television actress, Rosemary Radley.

Vinnie imagines that she blends in with her British friends, and Fred slowly gains entry to the social world that surrounds the glamorous Rosemary, but ultimately both Americans find themselves oddly out of place--strangers amongst people they really don't understand. This well-written novel should please those who enjoy reading about academic life, for while the novel is not set on a campus, the main characters are plagued with literary rivalry, the hope of tenure, and the unflagging drain of research. A vague, light humour permeates the story, and this humour undoubtedly raises the novel from its potentially depressing elements. Vinnie is equipped with (and saved by) a marvelous imagination, and oddly, Fred is saved by a total lack of imagination. This was an enjoyable novel, and while definitely not a romance novel, it possesses less depth than I hoped for, and the depiction of Chuck Mumson was a little over the top and far more exaggerated than necessary-displacedhuman.

Rating:
Summary: An understated pageturner
Review: Characterization and social observation take center stage in Alison Lurie's Pulitzer Prize winning book (1985). It's witty and droll and rather literary, and in its own understated way a page turner. Vinnie Miner is an English professor in her 50's, divorced and not exceptionally pretty. In fact, she looks (and in public, acts) like an old school marm. She's spending a semester in London to research a book on children's lymericks. In a parallel story, Fred Turner is an exceptionally attractive, 29 year old English professor, newly separated from his wife, who is also spending the semester in England to research his own book. They are aquaintances and peers, and work for the same university in the states. Their stories cross paths throughout the book, adding to the juxtaposition of their two lives.

Vinnie and Fred are vastly different characters who share common human need: companionship, acceptance, love. Foreign Affairs is the story of the paths each of their lives takes while on this sojourn in England, how each reaches his own moment of truth. Along the way, we are greatly entertained by their independent observations of England and of English high society, of the inherent differences between American and English mannerisms and lifestyles, and of the pretenses we all put forth when interacting with the world. There are also some wonderful secondary characters, who occasionally upstage the two main characters, much to the reader's delight.

The novel moves along splendidly, until the very end, when, unfortunately, Lurie finds it necessary to throw in several plot twists which cater more to the dramatic, and play on coincidence and unfounded surprise. These are so utterly unnecessary that I became angry at Lurie for spoiling such a wonderfully engaging book. Still, despite a few weak moments near the end, this one gets four stars

Rating:
Summary: Was 1985 a slow year for novels?
Review: I have read about a quarter of all the books that have won the Pulitzer, and I am attempting to read them all in the next year or so. I think 1985 may have been a slow year for writers. This book is good, yes, but Pulitzer good? No. I never really connected with either character, and felt that some of the writing, for lack of a better word, was cheesy (i.e the entire "Fido" creation). Compared with the Pulitzer winners from the years before and after, the book is weak. This may be an unfair criticism, and maybe the Pulitzer stamp on the front of the book lead to unfair expectations, but the book just does not do "it" for me. And that undefineable "it" is what makes me not recommend this book to other readers.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece about England and America
Review: I recently re-read Foreign Affairs, and having adored it twelve years ago was amazed at how delightful, clever and funny it still is. Two American academics, the plain, wryly self-pitying Vinnie, and handsome young Fred, are both English teachers on sabbatical from Corinth University in London. Vinnie loves England, which she conflates with her love of children's classics, and a sort of prim moral and social superiority. Sitting next to an ignorant Mid-Westerner, Chuck, she disdains him pretty much as Lurie's readers would, too, only to be gradually captivated by his underlying good qualities.
Fred, too, finds his miserable experience of London transformed by an affair with a titled actress, who despite her refined charms (the complete opposite to those of his estranged Jewish wife, Ruth) turns out to be less wholesome than perceived. As with all Lurie's novels, the characters in it are interlinked to those in previous books (Ruth is Ruth Zimmern, whom some may remember from Only Children). The allusions to Henry James are done with grace, but what really impresses is the wit and perfection of style Lurie brings to her subject of American innocence and British corruption. For British readers it's wonderfully refreshing to see ourselves through such a diamond-sharp lens... I also recommend The Last Resort as a mordant satire on death and love.

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Summary: Yin and Yang: Two Lives, Two Loves
Review: In alternating chapters devoted to each character, six months in the life of Virginia ("Vinnie") Miner, an unmarried Ivy League college professor for whom the sweet bird of youth has long flown away, are contrasted with the same period in the life of Fred Turner - young and handsome, and a junior faculty member of the same Ivy League college. Although they barely know each other, they are both members of the English department and are both on sabbatical in London at the same time doing research.

Their stories are studies in contrast and in similarities. Fred is lonely, having recently become estranged from his wife; Fred loathes England (at least, at first). Vinnie is beyond lonely - at 54, she has settled into a life of comforting routine, even if the routine involves frequent trips to her beloved England. Fred turns heads; Vinnie is "the sort of person no one ever notices."

They each find romance in England. Fred is upwardly mobile - he falls in love with a beautiful and aristocratic actress of some fame. Vinnie is shocked to find herself having a romance with a sanitary engineer from Tulsa, a man who rarely reads books and with whom she would barely have deigned to have talked had they not been thrown together.

Which of these two relationships goes on to become a life-love, and which ends in humiliating farce? It is the genius of this book that the answer, like life itself, remains unpredictable throughout the novel, right up to its surprising end. This novel was highly deserving of the Pulitzer Prize.

Rating:
Summary: ultimate US/UK airplane read
Review: Lurie updates Henry James's perspectives on Americans in England while covering the love lives of the middle-aged. The book is beautifully written, even when describing Vinnie Miner, 54-year-old female English professor, settling in for the flight to London: "In this culture, where energy and egotism are rewarded in the young and good-looking, plain aging women are supposed to be self-effacing, uncomplaining--to take up as little space and breathe as little air as possible. All very well, she thinks, if you travel with someone dear to you or at least familiar: someone who will help you stow away your coat, tuck a pillow behind your head, find you a newspaper--or if you choose, converse with you.

But what of those who travel alone? Why should Vinnie Miner, whose comfort has been disregarded by others for most of her adult life, disregard her own comfort? Why should she allow her coat, hat, and belongings to be crushed by the coats and hats and belongings of

younger, larger, handsomer persons? Why should she sit alone for seven or eight hours, pillowless and chilled, reading an outdated copy of _Punch_, with her feet swollen and her pale amber eyes watering from the smoke of the cigarette fiends in the adjoining seats?"

Much ink is spent on the life of the plain woman, notably the plain middle-aged woman:

"Within the last couple of years she has in a sense caught up with, even passed, some of her better-equipped contemporaries. The comparison of her appearance to that of other women of her age is no longer a constant source of mortification. she is no better looking than she ever was, but they have lost more ground. ... Her features have not taken on the injured, strained expression of the former beauty, nor does she paint and decorate and simper and coo in a desperate attempt to arouse the male interest she feels to be her due. She is not consumed with rage and grief at the cessation of attentions that were in any case moderate, undependable, and intermittent. As a result men--even men she has been intimate with--do not now gaze upon her with dismay, as upon a beloved landscape devastated by fire, flood, or urban development. ..."

Lurie is also very sharp on tourism: "His earlier anomie, Fred realizes now, was occupational. Psychologically speaking, tourists are disoriented, ghostly beings; they walk London's streets and enter its buildings in a thin ectoplasmal form, like a double-exposed photograph. London isn't real to them, and to Londoners they are equally unreal--pale, featureless, two-dimensional figures who clog up the traffic and block the view."

Rating:
Summary: A great read!
Review: Not only did I enjoy this book tremendously, but I recently recommended it to my 79 y.o. mother. She also enjoyed the book, and is now looking for more books by Ms. Lurie to read.
Although published several years ago, the characters and subject matter are still timely (and funny!)

Rating:
Summary: A beautifully written book
Review: The sometimes overlapping stories of Vinnie Miner and Fred Turner, two Americans conducting literary research in London, prove entertaining, even if a bit contrived. The earlier portions of the stories are much better at communicating the tongue-in-cheek narrative on American perceptions of England (and American perceptions of America) and some of the dialogue and musings that Lurie provides for Miner are down right hysterical.

This is very easy and pleasant read. The strength of this book is Lurie's ability to provide satirical and witty commentary on life in general and on life abroad. The power of this is diluted as the focus of the book changes from that commentary to the details of a story which become overdramatized. In doing this, Lurie loses much of the cleverness contained in the first three-quarters of the book.

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Summary: Matters of the Heart
Review: This is my first reading of an Alison Lurie novel and - being that I am still reeling from the resolution of "Foreign Affairs" since its completion nearly 24 hours ago - it looks as though I will be reading more of her works.

This book is like reading two separate novels, the chapters regularly flip-flopping between the two protagonists, Vinnie Miner and Fred Turner, whose only correlation is that they are both professors at Corinth University. Such sporadic story-telling has the advantage of keeping things interesting, especially in its opposing perceptions of relative characters. And equally insightful is to exist in the mind of Vinnie and then, a chapter later, to meet Vinnie through Fred's mind or vice versa...(that alone is worth the Pulitzer Prize.) The disadvantage to all this is when one becomes too intrigued with a specific storyline, the reader - not wanting to miss any little mention about the preferred protagonist - is forced to trudge through, what seems to be, an extra long chapter just to return to "the program already in progress."

The humorous and, oftentimes, neurotic Vinnie Miner is a plain fifty-four-year-old woman, comfortably single, and an absolute lover of solitude. She takes delight in her excursion to England in which she does research for her novels regarding children's folklore.

The solemn Fred Turner is almost a complete opposite to Vinnie; he is a handsome twenty-eight-year-old man, miserably married, and desperately seeking to be in the company of others. He despises his trip to England, and loathes the British Museum - hilariously named the "Bowel Movement" by him - where he obtains his research on the poet, John Gay.

Refreshingly, each chapter opens with a blurb of either a children's rhyme for Vinnie or a couple of poetic lines of John Gay for Fred, setting the tone for the following chapter.

What makes this novel complete is that both Vinnie and Fred experience a much-needed internal awakening.

In keeping to its bipolar quality, the progress of Vinnie's affair is gradual as compared to Fred's fast companionship. Yet, similarily, both are blissfully self-educated in the book's conclusion, for each character does learn that in matters of "Foreign Affairs," a different country can make a different heart.

This is a worthwhile read.