Turns out i had the book on my shelf, and had read it before, and it was relegated to some dusty drawer in my memory. Elder was given dreams to leave Compton by public school teachers, and he received aid to take the SATs. Elder benefitted from a public education (at Fairfax, my own alma mater), yet he believes in taking away funds from public education. The private sector can do it better, and the government gets in the way.

During the course of his doctorate studies at Stanford, he did his field work in China and translated Hindi and Chinese poetry into English. He returned to Delhi via Xinjiang and Tibet which led to a travel narrative From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983) which won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. But as they do, Trevor reveals each one. And we watch Emily fracture, slowly, with each grappa, each memory, each dream. I cannot imagine his life growing up. Nor can I imagine his father Randolph's life either - who was forced out of his house when he was 13 after his mother and her then current boyfriend thought he was too much trouble. Randolph always worked hard at whatever he did. He took pride in his work and seems to have instilled those values in two of his sons (the third Dennis died of drug related problems). The small diner he owned for a couple of decades did everything from scratch and was a neighborhood institution. When Seth began reconstructing their story, more than 10 years ago, he did so with little sense of where it might lead. By then Henny was dead and Shanti, 85 and in poor health, needed the stimulus of some project. In the event, as he sat down, laptop at the ready, to conduct his interviews, it was Seth who was stimulated - and made to grasp how many events and intellectual currents of the 20th century intersected with the lives of Shanti and Henny.The disappointment of his wedding night drives Elmer to drink, and though he remains a kind and gentle man who does try to hide his desire for alcohol, the emotional distance between man and wife, with unwanted, but too often given, help from the man’s sisters, grows with each passing day. Full disclosure: I spent my adolescence reading gossipy accounts of Gertrude Stein's involvement with William James, with Hemingway, with Picasso, with the Shakespeare and Co. people, with the whole coterie surrounding the first performance of Les Rites des Printemps. The woman knew every one who was even remotely fascinating in early 20th century western culture. Plus, she was so darn dramatic and moody, saying all kinds of epigrammatically horrible things about the people who were supposed to be her friends, and not really respecting any gender norms whatsoever. I read everything I could get my hands on about her, kind of the way other girls my age were reading all about River Phoenix. The heroine is a guesthouse proprietress and an author of some pink novels – she and her guests are trying to recuperate after a terrible gory calamity. The absolute joy of William Trevor is that he can elevate the ordinary, the mundane, the frankly tedious and boring of life, into something so beautiful to read.

This book tells two very different stories about two very different but parallel women. Two different geographies, two different dispositions, two different life stories are told. But there are a good number of shared elements--from a literary point of view. The two women are almost the exact same age at the exact same time--and completely unknown to one another. Their significant life events also occur (I think I remember) at almost the exact same times. Book 23 – the strain is starting to tell. Will Andrew screw up this close to graduation? (Winter of 1987). Elder hasn't lived an interesting enough life to write a compelling autobiography. If he has, he does not want to write about such matters, which might be refreshing if it didn't feel like he is nonetheless attempting to communicate something here--about himself, his father or his socio-political views. He spent eight hours in jail...because he mouthed-off to a cop after being rightfully accused of jaywalking. Not exactly Hurricane territory, and this doesn’t go anywhere. Even if you think you know unreliable (not to say demented) narrators, “Reading Turgenev” and “My House in Umbria” are both studies in a master craft of its kind! Emily herds them into that house in Umbria. The survivors heal together, ‘a skin’ forming over them.

His parents had a fraught relationship, which was perhaps the most scandalous part of Mr. Elder’s life; they ended up sleeping in separate rooms. Divorce was taboo for their generation. This is one of the few interesting things that happened in his household that Elder should've expanded on, but he doesn't. He also doesn’t get too much into his relationship with his brothers. He lost one, to drug abuse, and he does pay tribute to how beloved he was despite not being conventionally regarded as “good” or useful.