Love, Again (original 1995; edition 1996)

In lots of ways, this is probably a 3 star book. It's not very exciting. Most things that are suggested may happen never happen. But as with the other Lessing book I've read, the quality of the insight is so good that it can't be discounted. Usually I copy my favorite passages from dog-eared pages into my Goodreads review, but this time there were 20 of those pages and they required their own Google Doc. And, like with the other book, they're a little scary.

I liked this book right away, because a lot of what I like is right in the bones of the thing. It's kind of a miraculous recipe. I heartily approved of Sarah and all of the threads in her life. Her work at the theater is tantalizingly realistic (there is such a thing). Her quick friendship with Stephen is wonderful and touching right away. Her unusual obligation to raising her niece Joyce, though Joyce's parents are perfectly viable but unwilling, felt immediately serious to me. And the exposition of Julie Vairon, the thread stitching everything here together, was extremely appealing.

The characters spend the book at work on a play (with music) about Julie Vairon, an obscure 19th century (fictional) figure who became famous after death as a composer, artist and diarist, of a background "like Napoleon's Josephine". She lived alone in a forest outside a small French town, had a few serious love affairs, and drowned herself while in her thirties.

I am pretty sure that if this all were true, I would really like Julie Vairon the figure. She seems extremely real and I can really imagine the way she would be appreciated now. A Women's History Month kind of person. I don't think however I would like Julie Vairon the play very much, but I suspended disbelief enough to let the characters think so. The play's evolution is one of the book's major signals -- the characters all have very distinct ways of relating to Julie, and their "take" on the play is the way we place them in Sarah's moral spectrum. France and England are characterized by their different responses to the productions, and at the end, we are bitterly disappointed when someone wants to make a musical.

The atmosphere of the book is a really strong element, first the portion during the production in Julie's semi-hometown in France, and then the portion where Sarah becomes a welcome guest of Stephen's English country estate where the next production happens. That place and their relationships to it reminded me a little of Brideshead. I wished she'd spent even more time there, as all the time spent absorbing Stephen's life was excellent, his quiet psychosis and strange marital situation. Really good.

What's funny about this book is that in a lot of ways the plot -- older woman falls in love with younger men, twice -- makes it sound really Oprah-friendly. But Lessing is such a brutal writer. It seems there's always some dark insanity involved. A bit of danger, as these people will never recover from this ordinary pain.

Sarah goes through so much pain with these feelings it's almost enough to disconnect you from the story. All this for Bill, really? Bill sucks! Henry doesn't suck. Henry is great. But much, much time is spent in the detail of her unconsummated passions, which really go nowhere. For all the self-referential comparisons to bedroom farce, not one single bed gets hopped this whole time. (Well, one off-screen, and not Sarah's.) I suppose that's part of the point, but France was mildly oppressive to read through with all of this. (Though maybe because I really didn't care about Bill, at all.)

Once those are over, though, what she's left with is moving, as is her effort at caring for Stephen on his parallel paths. Between Stephen and her brother and Julie, so much of the thematic purpose of the novel comes together in the last 50 pages, it's so strong. A little odd because it seems it wasn't present earlier, but really it was, just quietly. In the scene when Elizabeth is so angry, and says it's so irresponsible, I really thought she was directing the reproach at Sarah, because it sounded exactly like the senseless blame her brother always levied about his daughter. Her reflections on being alone at the end go really deep.

So I'm really glad I read this, even though "nothing happened". ( )

I think, when it comes down to it, my overriding emotion with this book is disapointment. This book is possible the best ~100 page novel about love I have EVER read. Unfortunatley, it's 340 pages long. When this book is good it is very very good. Infortunatley, in between the good there's a lot of unnecesary babble and irrelivancy and it grated. Every time I picked this book up I had to force myself to do it which is why, as much as I loved this book, I can never really love it.

Love, again is possibly one of the best descriptions of love and depression I've ever read. It's nuanced and so achingly longing. The problem was I felt it was a description and not a novel. It was almost like case notes on a love. Of course, the main character is well drawn out, complex. In fact, many of the characters are intense and compelling, it's the connections between them I find week. The dialogue is, frankly, appaling. I get the point that the book is trying to make about how we don't talk to each other and how this is carried in the dialogue but in doing this a lot of character development was simply skipped over. There were also a lot of refrences to literature which, frankly, went over my head and annoyed me. Because I'm simple like that. ( )