| Title | : | Truth and Consequences |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0143038036 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780143038030 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 240 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2005 |
Truth and Consequences Reviews
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As someone whose marriage didn't make it through the changes and hardship that chronic illness (CI) adds to the already difficult proposition of figuring out how to spend a lifetime together, I thought this book was fascinating. It was a peek into the window of the lives of two couples dealing with that exact situation. One couple already knew they were dealing with chronic illness - migraine - when they married; and the other couple whose chronic illness - back pain - came on after they had been married for many years.
I am the person with the CI so I was very much absorbed by the story from the caregiver's perspective. Not that my X ever did much (any!) actual caregiving.
In spite of the fact that we split up almost 10 years ago, I feel like this book will help me move on and forgive the lie (he DID vow to continue to love me "in sickness and in health"). I guess some people just can't deal when their previously healthy spouse becomes sick and there's no end to it in sight. -
I really enjoyed this contemporary novel but if you peruse the GoodReads reviews you'll quickly see that not all readers shared this point of view. So, I'll lay my prejudices on the table:
. . . I enjoy reading almost anything set in an academic environment;
. . . I am looking for a reading "diet" that includes more than books written before 1960 and/or light mysteries;
. . . I am intrigued by the concept of La Belle Dame Sans Merci (literally, the beautiful woman without mercy); and,
. . . I like the exploration and exposition of the creative process.
So, that said, this was a satisfying, two-day read for me. The principal characters were not necessarily original, but intrigued me anyway. The femme fatale was so similar to the title character in another novel (Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z)that she must be based upon a familiar "star" in the academic world. Whether that is the case or not is irrelevant, but it amused me to read about a glamorous empty vessel sweeping onto campus for a term as a major fellow. Many reviewers complained that this comedy was not amusing, but her character provided me with enough smirks and smiles to satisfy.
But the most interesting facet of the book for me was Lurie's exploration of art. If you are a reader who likes a book to leave you with a question or subject for further thought---this book achieved that objective for me. What inspires creativity? -
Allison Lurie never disappoints. This book isn't my favorite of hers but it was a good diversion. I feel like it could have used one more round of edits and maybe another 30-40 pages worth of elaboration overall. Abrupt ending.
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Alan, made grumpy by his bad back is making it difficult for his wife Jane to be 'good', and their marriage is further threatened when the grotesquely self-centred Delia takes up a celebrity position at the University.
Lurie understands humans, their pettiness and secret feelings, and the annoyance of unreliable photo-copiers. Funny, entertaining, with great dialogue and well-drawn characters. Must read more of her. -
Its been a challenging year ... and I've seriously neglected documenting my reads.
Truth and Consequences was one of the books I completed in 2017.
The story of how a couple can become so disconnected is a nice read.
I think Ms. Lurie presented a great glimpse of human nature .. and how easily people .. especially
couples misread each other.
A very good read. -
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, 8 1/2 x 11, 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 images--movies, animated ads,YouTube, video clips from friends online--we 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 181. Delia has convinced Alan that he should sacrifice everything to his art--new 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 butcher-block 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 carry-on 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.
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Alison Lurie spent most of her career in an academic environment, so she is right at home in this tight-knit world. As in her other novels, her characters are highly intelligent and well-educated but that does not prevent them from behaving in wildly emotional, unpredictable and self-destructive ways . . . just like the rest of humanity. Two couples and two affairs are at the heart of this novel. When Alan Knight develops chronic, debilitating back pain, it changes him into a selfish, unlikeable person -- and his wife Jane simply stops loving him in spite of herself. Meanwhile, Delia enters the picture, who is utterly egotistical yet so charming and manipulative that almost everyone she meets except Jane falls under her spell, including Alan. Lurie's writing is so witty and insightful that I enjoyed every page.
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My (extremely vague) impression of Ms. Lurie prior to finding this (and not much else) in the audiobooks section of my library was that she was a Well-Respected and Therefore Not Crazy-Popular Literary Author, thus suggesting that her book would be (how shall I put this) good. Not so. Characters were universally both cliched and one-dimensional, the love plot(s)/wife-swap was implausible, and there was no particularly lovely writing or gripping insight to make up for either of these failings. The best I can say for it is that I wanted to punch each individual involved (author and characters alike) in the face for a unique and different reason.
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This book was awful. I'm rarely this critical, but the characters were flat, the story cliched. I felt nothing for the characters and there was no real climax. I'm just glad it was so short and that I only paid $2 for it.
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I haven't read a book by Alison Lurie in 15 years and I think it was a good idea to pick Truth and Consequences because I was immediately in familiar territory. I've checked and, yes, Foreign Affairs also mentions Corinth and of course, both books deal with academics and their love lives.
In truth, nothing much happens during the entire book but it was really fascinating to read alternatively about Jane and Alan's most intimate thoughts, it felt like being inside their heads somehow. Of the 4 main characters, I really only rooted for Jane and thought her story was the most interesting, especially how she was conflicted between being a caregiver and pursuing her own happiness.
Maybe not Alison Lurie's best work but still a very solid book. -
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 end-of-term state my head is in at the moment. Two very self-absorbed academics/artists (one with a chronic pain condition, described in harrowing terms) are paired with practical, long-suffering partners. Lots of amusingly realistic cameos of academic life.
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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 51.
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? -
Allison 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 stars because its a Good Read.
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I sought out "Truth and Consequences" because I have chronic migraines and somewhere I had seen that one of the characters in this book also got migraines. The book is about two couples. Alan and Jane: Alan has developed severe back pain and Jane has been his caregiver for a little over a year. Alan is becoming increasingly grumpy and the caregiving role is getting thin. The second couple is Delia and Henry: Delia has stress induced migraines, aside from being her caregiver, Henry follows behind and cleans-up everything Delia cancels due to her migraines. Alan is a professor of architecture, Jane is an administrator at the same university. Alan and Delia have just been named fellows to the program Jane administers, resulting is ongoing interaction between the four characters.
Lurie's observations about life with chronic pain, from the experience of the sufferer as well as the caregiver are extremely astute. Jane suspects that Delia "uses" her migraines and she does, but not at all in the way that Jane thought. In fact, what Lurie describes via Delia is a form of Dolorism. It is something that medical practitioners and many clergy fail to understand, but the deeper and longer one has experienced pain, the more it makes sense.
I would especially recommend this book to anyone you know struggling to be empathetic to someone in their lives with pain (that is not to say that it's okay to be a jerk like Alan is) but Lurie provides insight into what it's like to be fine one day and have your life overcome with relenting pain the next and for months after. -
Lurie seems to be drawn to a storyline where two couples who are previously unfamiliar with each other end up having adulterous affairs by swapping partners, a scenario that is probably more common with couples who have a history with each other. Fans of Lurie have not been as fond of this title as they have her other works, which is understandable. She is characteristically satirical about academics, but she keeps this one fairly light. What's missing here is the broader commentary on American culture that we find in books like The Nowhere City. Truth and Consequences is engaging enough, and we are introduced to some pretty disgusting people, but this is not Lurie's best work.
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The novel won me over eventually with its cast of characters so maddeningly real-to-life. It was difficult getting started with it because, as in the previous Alison Lurie book I read,
The Last Resort, we have to deal with an aging husband bedeviled by pain. I didn't feel quite ready for another dance with death.
Fortunately this did not turn out to be the same story. -
I was given this book by a friend and now I am not so sure what she thinks of me.
I am not sure what I will say about it, but I did not like it. The writing was simple but not in an interesting or beautiful way and the storyline was silly. There is nothing to recommend about it and I would have abandoned it except that she will ask me about it.
An unfortunate read. -
This is an interesting marital saga and the writing is great, though I didn't sympathise with any of the characters at all. On the plus side, Dora Delaney, the femme fatale around which all the disasters circulate, is one of the best nasty characters I've ever read - she's just amazingly horrible, and acutely fascinating. The ending is very satisfying.
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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 😊
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College faculty lives and wives are not nearly as pathetic as Lurie paints. And spousal caregivers are more heroic and resilient. Gimme a break and pick a less boring foursome to skewer.
