BOOK CLUB BABES ASK -WHAT’S BETTER THAN FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND A PULTIZER PRIZE?
The theme of this astonishing novel, FOREIGN AFFAIRS BY ALLISON LURIE, is how we change when we move to a new place and we are not surrounded by the expectations of others.
Sherrill agrees to that theory as she has moved twenty-four times from one part of the USA to the other – each time a reinvention!
The book takes place in England and since we are both Anglophiles like the main character, Vinnie, we immediately identified with her!
The book takes place in England and since we are both Anglophiles like the main character, Vinnie, we immediately identified with her!
She is there on a grant to work on her new book about children’s folk rhymes. Sherrill identified with Vinnie on many levels – not only because she is small in stature and wears a size five shoe!
Vinnie is also a woman who has given up and believes no one will truly love her because no man ever has. So when she finds someone who is not remotely the sort of man she can seriously imagine for herself, it changes her.
The big moment for her is when she does something frightening and uncomfortable because she wants to do what Chuck would have expected of her. His view of her is that she’s an absolutely wonderful person. She knows she’s not, but she wants to live up to that view of herself. And by doing this thing, which she doesn’t think of as very important, she has a tremendous effect on the lives of others.
There are countless rich layers to this book and so many fascinating characters. Fred, Vinnie’s young colleague, in England doing his research without his recently separated wife – he is miserable until he meets a beautiful unpredictable English actress and is introduced into her dizzyingly romantic world.
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