I picked this up at the book sale with no expectations but thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a book of interwoven short stories that had appeared in the New Yorker. They're about a Viennese woman, Ilka who grew up in America and goes to work at an artistic sort of think tank affiliated with a college. The characters are all poets and writers, all academics in each other's business bumbling along. Ilka is such a real, believable character who is always trying to say provocative things and be noticed. She is moving about in each story trying constantly to 'connect' as E.M. Forster says. She latches on to a very charismatic couple, the man, Leslie Shakespeare, is the director of the Institute, and clings for dear life. But somehow in her determination to 'make friends' and connect she is very endearing.
Segal says some very insightful things through her characters----when someone dies and everyone reacts in different ,mostly awkward,ways to the death one character remarks "Calamity is a foreign country. We don't know how to talk to the people who live there." Some of the stories aren't as effective but overall I was happy to have read this.
No comments:
Post a Comment