Book Review: A Wedding in Provence: A Novel by Ellen Sussman

A Wedding in Provence: A Novel by Ellen Sussman

Published by: Ballantine Books

Published on: July 15, 2014

Page Count: 288

Genre: Fiction

My Reading Format: ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley

Available Formats: Kindle ebook and hardcover

My Review: 

Have you ever been a part of a wedding (your own or a family member or close friend's), and in the days leading up to the big event, tensions and relationship drama and past issues all begin to surface, layers peeling away like an onion? We all have. Weddings bring out the best and worst in people. All that togetherness can really make things interesting.

That's the case in A Wedding in Provence for the soon-to-be wed couple Brody and Olivia. They've arrived in the French countryside a few days before their ceremony, to be held at the inn owned and operated by Olivia's best friend Emily and her husband Sebastian. As the other wedding guests arrive, we learn about their relationships with one another and their past and present lives. There's Brody's womanizing best friend Jake, Olivia's two adult daughters Nell and Carly, Brody's mother Fanny and Nell's date Gavin who all bring their (literal and figurative) baggage with them for the weekend. Also present are the shadows of others who aren't attending the wedding: Nell's recently deceased boyfriend Chaney, Nell and Carly's father, Carly's workaholic boyfriend Wes, Brody's father and widower Brody's first wife and first love.

The relationships are complicated and still in progress in many cases. Olivia wants to relax as the bride-to-be but is mothering her two troubled daughters, both of whom are working through issues from their lives back home and undergoing a period of self-discovery. Their father is still a part of their lives (as much as he can be), and Nell and Carly are unsure about letting their mother's new husband into their lives. Nell still struggles with her boyfriend's suicide months before, and is still making the rash decisions she has made her whole life, such as bringing her seat mate from her flight with her to the wedding. Gavin seems like fun at first but is sketchy, not surprisingly bailing on Nell as soon as he gets the chance. Carly, the put-together, predictable sister, is rethinking her boring life with a boring boyfriend and let loose a little. Brody is navigating his parents' failed marriage, and father's sickness and absence from the wedding. Even innkeepers Emily and Sebastian have hit a rough patch in their marriage.

Overall, this book is a fun read. I would have loved to see this French town on the Mediterranean, and its fabulous wine and food take more of a central role in the book. At times I found the characters and their sex lives to be tiring. But, the characters are complex and were enjoyable. At the end of the book Olivia is the beautiful bride and Brody the happy groom, and they are married surrounded by their favorite friends and relatives. The book ends but not neatly, which is, I think, just like real life, which has many of the same themes this book has: second chances, making up for lost time, healing, forgiveness and love.

Three and a half stars out of five

If you liked this book, you’ll like French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France by Richard Goodman and Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes (for an American take on visiting the European countryside), and Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin and Once Upon a Time There Was You by Elizabeth Berg (for stories about weddings).

Recent Read: A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889 by Frederic Morton

At a friend's recommendation I borrowed  A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889 from the library to read after returning from vacation. It's not one I likely would have been very interested in were it not for the fact that I've just visited Vienna and seen some of the places mentioned in the book. While the author does a great job of showing what all was going on in Vienna during a short period of time and it was fascinating to note all the interesting and historically significant people all in this city all at the same time, the writing is a little dry in places and difficult to muddle through. There were places I just needed to skim to get through, which doesn't happen very often. I was very glad though to get some extra historical context to go along with what I heard and saw on the visit.

The hunting lodge, Mayerling.

One day we took a bus tour of the nearby Vienna Woods, a rural area with protected land, some small towns and farms, kind of like the national parks we have in the States. We stopped briefly outside Mayerling, a small town with what today is an abbey but during the time frame in the book was the hunting lodge for Austria's Crown Prince Rudolf. The lodge was the location of Rudolf's suicide and his 17 year-old mistress' murder while Rudolf's wife was away. It was a scandalous, mysterious event.

I wanted to read the book to learn more about their relationship and the murder-suicide. Of the 30 chapters in the book, however, Morton really only dedicated about two chapters completely to Rudolf and Mary Vetsera's relationship and infatuation with each other, so that wasn't quite what I expected. The book did provide me with a few nuggets of good information and in parts was a good complement to the recent vacation.

Recent Reads: Night Falls on the City and The Journey That Saved Curious George

I'm just back from a wonderful family vacation where, unlike my usual vacation reading behavior, I only read one book. It was a long one, related to the trip, and I enjoyed it immensely. It's called Night Falls on the City by Sarah Gainham, and it's historical fiction about Vienna from 1938-1945 during Nazi occupation and World War II. The central character is a prominent Viennese stage actor named Julie who is married to a Jewish lawmaker. He's forced to go into hiding soon after the Nazis make their entrance into Austria, and Julie and their housekeeper Fina have to keep everything under wraps. While in hiding Franzl leads a monotonous existence but spends most of his time writing a book that Julie and a friend named Georgy risk everything to publish without putting Franzl at risk.

I began reading this book on the plane on the way over. The trip culminated in Vienna, so I read the book before bed each night as I looked forward to seeing this elegant city in person (in the meantime there was quite a lot to behold in Munich, Innsbruck, Salzburg, and a few Austrian and German small towns in between). I finally finished the book the day after our return, having read about half of it on the plane ride from Vienna back to the States. It very nearly received five stars from me, and would have been one of the few to get that distinction from me all year. Without Julie and her theater company's too-long and too-drawn out residence in Poland, which didn't relate quite enough to the crux of the book for me, it would have gotten a perfect rating. Nonetheless, it was a fantastic book and I raved about it to my family the whole time we were away.

Then, just after finishing Night Falls on the City I read The Journey that Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H. A. Rey by Louise Borden. As a child I read and loved the Curious George books, but I had no idea all the authors had to go through to get them published. The couple had to escape Paris on bicycles with their manuscripts as the Germans invaded France during World War II. Their first stop was Rio de Janeiro before they settled in New York City. Borden traces their steps across the continents by car, bike and ship, and you realize all the things that could have gone wrong, causing the Reys to lose their Curious George manuscripts. It's really an amazing journey, and both books are wonderful reads.

Here are a few photos from Vienna:

 Schoenbrunn Palace, the Habsburgs' summer residence

 St. Stephen's Cathedral

 The Habsburgs winter residence

Beethoven and me

A Modern-Day Juliet

I recently finished reading Anne Fortier's Juliet, a caper through Italy's Siena, the supposed setting for the original version of Romeo and Juliet, made famous by William Shakespeare but a story that predates him. This historical fiction novel is one I picked up off the Notable Paperbacks table on a trip to Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books. Whatever I pick up from this table never disappoints. One of the reviews cited on the back cover says the book "reads like a Da Vinci Code for the smart modern woman." So of course I had to have it.

Much like another fictional book I've recently about a previous work, The Sherlockian, Juliet alternates back and forth between the heroine, the modern-day Juliet, an American woman in her mid-20s who returns to her native Italy to sort out a family secret and possible inheritance from her mother, and the original Juliet, the daughter in a powerful, feuding family in the 1340s. The two Juliets are connected by family lineage and the modern-day one has a mystery to solve with the help of her twin sister Janice. The two of them have to decide who to trust of the new Italian relatives and acquaintances, a task that proves difficult.

I loved the spunky modern Juliet and how she approaches her mystery. I liked the characters she came in contact and the descriptions of how society in this small Italian town gets things done. Of course I liked it because of the Shakespeare references and this timeless romantic story. But the biggest reason why I picked up this book and enjoyed it so much is because I've been to Siena.

About 10 years ago my grandmother and I visited the northern half of Italy with a tour group and Siena was one of the places where we spent a day. We learned about Il Palio, an ancient horserace that has happened twice each year since the Middle Ages and then saw the Piazza del Campo where the finish line of the race is in the center of town. There is one horse and jockey in the race for each neighborhood in the city, and the winner gets major bragging rights until the next race: first priority seating in restaurants around Siena and all kinds of other preferrential treatment.

Here are a few of my (scanned in) photos of my visit to Siena. Whether or not you've been to this beautiful, ancient Italian town, I highly recommend reading Fortier's Juliet.

Book Review: Oh Mexico! Love and Adventure in Mexico City

Oh Mexico!: Love and Adventure in Mexico City by Lucy Neville
 
Published by: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
 
Published on: August 16, 2011
 
Page Count: 328
 
Genre: Travel Memoir, Autobiography
 
My Reading Format: Advanced reading copy in Adobe Digital Editions from Netgalley
 

Available Formats: Kindle and paperback
 
My Review:
 
Lucy Neville’s travel memoir, Oh Mexico!: Love and Adventure in Mexico City, starts out in a predictable way. This recent college graduate isn’t ready for the corporate world, so she decides to embark upon a journey far away from her home in Australia. In Mexico City, she decides, she can better her Spanish language skills, embrace and immerse herself in a different culture, and have a host of new experiences. For one year she decides to live in crime-ridden but culturally rich Mexico City, and she is determined to succeed there. Along the way she encounters quirky characters who are both escaping their lives in other countries and are Mexican natives. She learns how difficult it is to survive and thrive in a place where corruption is rampant and rules and laws are merely suggestions. She finds herself part of a culture where women tend to be hard workers while their men often do as little work as possible. She learns what is important to Mexican life: food, family and celebrations (even if many of them seem to make light of death).
 
For me this book was a nice break from travel memoirs that take place in Europe. Yes, I enjoy those books immensely, but it was nice to read a first-hand experience of a country I’ve never visited, not even in the areas that cater to North American tourists, and a country that only makes American news when there is something to report on border patrol issues or drug cartels. I’m not sure it made me immediately want to book a trip to check out Mexico City for myself, but it did give me a great admiration for the author and others who embark upon similar adventures.
 
I liked this Lucy, the narrator. I sometimes forgot that I was reading a book instead of hearing a friend recount her adventures abroad. For the first time in quite a while, I feel like I know Lucy and that she’s my friend. She’s relatable, spunky, and willing to keep trying until she finds a way that works. She’ll listen to your advice and she might follow it. Or she might find out for herself.
 
What I didn’t like about the book and fairly small compared to what I did. As Lucy struggles to decide between two men, her hot roommate Octavio and her kind-hearted boyfriend Ricardo, the decision in the book, whether it was in real life, was rushed. Lucy let us into her head, building up all the tension between her and Octavio right before he vanished from her life. Was it really like that? I suspect not since many people can’t just switch their emotions off that quickly and neatly. Then, as Mexico’s economy becomes greatly affected by the American one, Lucy and Ricardo decide to move back to Australia. Though the focus of the book was, obviously, life in Mexico City, I am so curious to know more about how things turned out once they got settled in Australia.
 
Lucy Neville, if Ricardo is a writer, please talk him into writing a companion book outlining his first year living with you in Australia. If he is not a writer, please consider how you could turn this new chapter in your life into a second book. 

Book Review: The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments From Lives on the Road

Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published on: May 26, 2011
Page count: 304
Genre: Nonfiction
My reading format: Advanced reading copy in Adobe Digital Editions from NetGalley
Available formats: Hardcover

Paul Theroux, a travel writer for more than four decades, recently published this book, a compilation of his own thoughts on how travel is best accomplished and the writings of other travel writers. Each chapter covers a theme of traveling such as using trains, traveling alone, items a traveler must have and strange foods travelers have encountered around the world. Those writers quoted in the book include many I've heard of and many I haven't. And truthfully, I hadn't yet come across Theroux in my reading, so I like that by reading this I was exposed to people I'd never heard of before. A couple of them will make it on my "to read" list. 

I love to travel and I love to read, so when I love when I can combine the two either by reading while I'm traveling or reading about traveling while I'm at home waiting for my next trip. That's why this book caught my eye. 

I am surprised fairly often with what I read. A book turns out to be not quite what I expected, and many times that works out in my favor. I learn something I wouldn't have known otherwise, or enjoy the book than I thought I might. Sadly, that's not the case with The Tao of Travel. I wanted to know about Theroux's travels. That's why I picked up the book. I wasn't so much interested in hundreds of pages of quotes from other writers, which is what I got. The variety of experiences included in this book are vast, but reading quote after quote after quote was nearly enough to make me abandon this book before I'd even finished the first chapter. I pressed ahead because I thought surely the rest of the book wouldn't be the same way. Well, it was. There are 27 chapters in the book and finally, finally, finally in Chapter 26 I got to what I'd been hoping for all along. Theroux had five short episodes of interesting events/people/places he'd encountered over the years during his travels. Each of the five gave him cause to reflect and it changed his perspective on that trip as a whole. It was great stuff. Then, in the final chapter, he gives readers a list of 10 pieces of advice on traveling. I also liked that very much. Unfortunately, the two chapters at the end, though I liked them, weren't enough to make me like the whole book. 

However, I am curious enough about Theroux now to read some of this other books where he relates only his own experiences. And, I like writers who are willing to share advice with other aspiring writers, like he did in the last chapter. On that note, I found a YouTube video of the author that I really like where he does just that. So while I don't necessary recommend The Tao of Travel, I am interested to read more of what this writer has written. Are you familiar with him? What are his other books like?

Travel Reading

Besides Homer and Langley, I also read a large part of Frances Mayes' A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller, while I was on vacation. This is truly the perfect vacation book, either for reading while you're on vacation or while you'd like to be. Mayes is the author of Under the Tuscan Sun, which I loved, and a follow-up, Bella Tuscany, about her home in Cortona, Italy.

Mayes describes in beautiful detail the year that she and husband Ed spent traveling while renovations were underway at their Italian home. The detail and description was such that I nearly felt as though I traveled with her to the places she visited like Greece, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, the English countryside, the Burgundy region of France, southern Italy and other places. This really was the perfect book for me to read right now, as I have most definitely been bitten by the travel bug, and am trying to think of all the ways I can both revisit London and travel to other places around the globe.

While in London, we ventured out one of our six days and took a train to Bath for the day. Mayes stopped here briefly on her travels to see the gardens of Great Britain and described it over about three pages. She, like me, noted that Jane Austen once lived here, visited the Royal Crescent (a curved row of townhouses) and saw a beautiful garden. Though I'll be covering Bath in a more detailed account later, here are a few pictures of the day spent there: