Read For Free Truth And Consequences Devised By Alison Lurie Made Available In Paper Copy

Lurie never lets me down, This book isn't my favorite of hers but it was very entertaining and engrossing, I think it could have benefited with some more editing repetitions and more depth in the secondary characters, The ending was not satisfying, Too abrupt. I've given it five because its a Good Read, On a cold blowy February day, . . so begins Foreign Affairs,

On a hot midsummer morning, . . so begins Truth and Consequences,

Of the two books, I prefer Foreign Affairs, Vinnie Miner does make an appearance by name only on p,

Here we have two marriages, four personalities, two of whom have chronic health problems, Does state of health change a personality, or draw out character traits that are already there
I discovered Alison Lurie's novels several years after high school by an unbidden series of events as well as some sins of my own devising.
Surprisingly, I became reacquainted with her work in Truth and Consequences, all these decades later,

Pardon the length, There is a review. To skip the reminiscence, go to the seventh paragraph,

I met Alison Lurie under her married name, Alison Bishop, as an Amherst College faculty wife, I was then a teenager, My dear friend B. J. babysat for her boys and I for the family upstairs' little boy, Billy, We would often enough entertain the boys together, usually downstairs, At that time I had discovered through writing for the Amherst High School newspaper, The Graphic, that I enjoyed it, An article about Swifty, Larry Swift, our chemistry teacher prompted that insight, Beyond the immense quantity of notes my friends and I passed to each other, imagining ourselves unobserved by our teachers, I saw writing could be an end in itself.
My mother wrote feature articles for The Amherst Record, A number of my friends and I kept journals, My dad read Samuel Pepys I read Anne Frank, I saw it as what people did, along with writing letters: crafting language for oneself or others,

One day, while downstairs with B, J. and the three boys, I saw Lurie had an office with an impressive desk, It had all the accoutrements of adult transactions: writing implements, letters, and the appearance that real work happened in that place, There was also a tan pasteboard box,/x, that looked a bit mysterious, Opened, it revealed a typewritten manuscript, an entire ream of paper or more, I don't remember whether B, J. made the breach of privacy with me, I do remembering reading the first few pages and then guiltily closing up the box,

Contemporaneously, I had been feeling the pinch of privacy disrespected myself, I had sent a letter I greatly enjoyed writing, to a high school friend whose father was a respected scholar, Among other things, I had written about a little girl seen from the upstairs window while I was sitting for Billy, She was jumping rope, I wrote, and quietly screaming, It was a curiosity worthy of sharing: her tight throated pitch of a scream but hushed, perhaps for propriety, The boy I'd sent the letter to responded saying that he had liked the letter and shown it to his father who commented negatively about the possibility of screaming quietly.
I was twice shocked. First the sharing, and second that the word choice I'd so labored to identify was discounted, out of hand,

Time passed. I went to school, graduated, moved to New York City, and worked for a little publishing company, From my work at Newell's print shop in Amherst I knew how to mark up manuscripts, proofread and design publications so it was a suitable job for me: the book and writing business.
I read book reviews too as part of publishing life, and there discovered a review of a book I wanted to read, Then, surprise. The photograph of the author was familiar, It was Lurie herself.

Another odd thing, Within the year, I found myself reading a library book that was somehow familiar, A phrase I'd read before suddenly struck me, The Seraglio by James Merrill, was the very book I'd read from the manuscript box on Alison Lurie's desk,

And now to the present, Some days ago I was thinking of her again and went into the fiction section of my local library, There was Truth and Consequences, a book of hers, likely the only one I hadn't yet read, And so I did.

It was only a few pages into the book that I remembered what I so enjoyed about her books, what set them apart, Her writing seems profoundly truthful, We get to know what her characters are really thinking or feeling, more often than what they look like while speaking, In this time of a wealth of imagesmovies, animated ads,YouTube, video clips from friends onlinewe apprehend, through Lurie's reticence of image, the steadiness of their continuing thoughts, We learn primarily through their inner language with visuals as a complement,

Truth and Consequences tells the story of Jane and Alan Mackenzie, Jane, a university administrator, is responsible for a coming conference of Visiting Fellows, Alan is a professor of architecture, working on a book of follies, those artificial Gothic ruins often built in large gardens, However some time earlier, Alan has hurt his back, to the degree that Jane sometimes doesn't recognize him, visually or emotionally, as the person she married, She is soldiering on as his caregiver, though resentful that there doesn't seem to be an end in sight, In addition to the difficulty in now working on his book, Alan is, as Jane points out to herself, a resentful caregetter,

As the Fellows begin to arrive, one becomes significant to the Mackenzies, Bestselling poet Delia Delaney, is famous for many things: her egotism, beauty, charm and migraine headaches, Delia's husband, Henry Hull, seems cut to the same pattern making requests of Jane for Delia's comfort, At first, neither Mackenzie seems to like them, but relatively quickly things change, Alan becomes well enough for what Jane's mother calls hanky panky and Jane falls in love with Delia's husband,

We know how things will end by page, Delia has convinced Alan that he should sacrifice everything to his artnew visions of architectural spaces, like sculptures, constructions symbolic of an earlier inhabitant, Now Jane is speaking to Alan about their duty to make their marriage work,

"It's our job, after all, the one we signed up for, "

"I guess so, " Alan was struck by the conventionality of her rhetoric, as if Jane were quoting the minister of her parents' church, as was possibly the case, It occurred to him that something was lacking from this conversation, Jane had not said that she loved him or had missed him, and he had not said it either,

"We have to try, that's all, " She did not look at him, but at the oiled butcherblock surface of the kitchen table, and her tone wavered, almost as if she were about to start crying.
Moved by a combination of affection, pity, and good manners, Alan crossed the kitchen floor and awkwardly put his arm around her,

"Mm, hm," he said, Over Jane's shoulder he saw her suitcase slumped against the fridge by the back door, That could be a construction too, he thought, The fridge, the broom and dustpan hanging on the wall, the open door, the wheeled carryon suitcase with its rectangular handle echoing the shape of the door,

I really enjoyed the difference between Truth and Consequences and other contemporary works, Thank the gods that provided the book on the library shelf for me to find, and the remembrance that sent me there,

At least ten years ago, I acted on something I'd intended to do for years before, long years before, I wrote to Lurie confessing my transgression on her privacy all those forty plus years ago, and apologized, I also told her of the coincidences about her work and that of James Merrill, She kindly replied, accepting the apology, commenting on my note, reminiscing a little about that period, and wanting to be remembered to B, J. a favorite person of hers as well, Many gifts of language.

Die Geschichte von Alan und Jane hat mir gut gefallen, auch wenn ich manchmal sehr genervt von Alan war, Der Schreibstil ist schön flüssig und das war bestimmt nicht das letzte Buch, was ich von der Autorin lesen werde I wanted to read something by Lurie as she has just died and there is so much praise

of her work going round at the moment.
I didn't think I had ever read anything by her, but this novel was on my shelves and once I started it, I realised I had indeed read it already.
A very satisfying academic novel, perfect for the tired endofterm state my head is in at the moment, Two very selfabsorbed academics/artists one with a chronic pain condition, described in harrowing terms are paired with practical, longsuffering partners, Lots of amusingly realistic cameos of academic life, .