Love and Friendship

In 2012 I commented on my read of The Truth About Lorin Jones saying that I hadn’t read any of Lurie’s books since 2006 and needed to get on and read them faster. So now it’s 14 years later and I’m just getting round to that. Ho hum. Time is ever weirder. I still have several more of her adult fiction titles to seek out so let’s see if I manage to do that in any reasonable definition of time from here.

This was Lurie’s first book, published in 1962. The characters are twenty- and thirty-somethings working at an isolated college somewhere in New England; at least the male characters are. The college is male only, though I’m not sure that’s ever stated, and most of the female characters are simply “wives”. The main female character is Emmy and the book deals with her relationship with her husband Holman Turner. For an American book this is very much a story of people from different classes with more or less every character being pegged out with their social standing at some point in the story. It’s the sort of thing I’d expect in British fiction of the same era. Emmy has an income of her own provided by her wealthy father whereas Holman notably describes his father as having worked in a bank omitting the bit where he was a security guard. Emmy’s income allows them to live in a nice house and have a cleaning lady two days a week, their friends are not so fortunate.

I felt the story took a long time to get going, and some of the writing early on felt downright clunky. Once everyone was introduced and Emmy embarked on an affair so that actual plot appears then the book was great. The beginning definitely gave off “first book” vibes though. I really enjoyed the structure, most of the story is from Emmy’s point of view but other characters get chunks, and some characters only get very small scenes to show their point of view but it all adds up. Each chapter is concluded with a letter from a visiting lecturer at the college which initially appear to have little relation to the main plot. However as the book goes on these third party views put parts of the plot in context. It’s an interesting choice of structure and one I enjoyed, and definitely shows off how Lurie would develop into a first class writer.

For a sixty-plus year old book it holds up pretty well really. Now, if I keep reading Lurie at the same rate I’ll read her other five books in the next 22 years making me complete her ten adult novels in 2048. I’m certainly not planning to leave it that long, and I have a copy of one of the remaining five, but wouldn’t bet against it taking me longer than that all the same. This also puts Lurie into my five book club where I’m very happy to welcome her as a member.