Simon Van Booy

Helen Cartwright has returned to the small English hometown of her girlhood, after living most of her adult life in Australia. She's past 80 now, alone, and ready for her life to end, since she believes it's over. She's a sympathetic, slightly dotty, sweet old dear who tries to have as little contact with humans as possible, keeps to a comfortable reclusive routine with lots of hot baths and naps...until she gives in to an inexplicable impulse that changes her outlook...a LOT. First she has show more to engage with the man who runs the hardware store in town --"What's the best way to get rid of a mouse?" Somehow she manages to get the glue traps he sold her irrevocably stuck to the bottom of her own slippers. And maybe she didn't really want the mouse dead...just out of the house. But maybe she needs to know something about mice first. NOW, she's had a conversation--in person--with the librarian, searching for a helpful book about keeping mice as pets. NOT that she's intending to do that, but until she can get someone at a shelter to agree to take it on... Delightful. Just damned delightful. And surprising. Beautiful, even. show less

I took a copy of this out of the library, but after the first page of Book One I just went out an bought my own copy; by the time I was done reading there was a bookmark on nearly every page (see below). I wasn't entirely sure a novel would be as good as his short stories (Love Begins in Winter; The Secret Lives of People in Love) but this was. It's the same poetic language but you spend longer with the same characters, as they fall apart and piece themselves back together. Piercingly show more beautiful and sad.


Prologue
Do we love before we love. (6)

Book One (3rd person)
For those who are lost, there will always be cities that feel like home.
Places where lonely people can live in exile of their own lives - far from anything that was ever imagined for them....a city...where the thunder of traffic is a sound so constant it's like silence. (11)

And the ability to love Athens, like all love, lies not in the city but in the visitor. (31)

The love of a man is like a drop of color into something clear. (33)

"Loneliness is like being the only person left alive in the universe, except that everyone else is still here." (67)

Somewhere across the city, among the thousands of beating hearts, was the one he wanted. (88)

Sometimes children, not long exiled from that silent world of softness and gesture, can feel in their tiny hearts the nuances of what adults say; and though powerless to act, they sense fully those feelings that creep like figures behind the veil of language. (116)

Rebecca told herself that she did not believe in fate. She believed that she alone was responsible for everything that happened to her. If there was such a thing as fate, she thought, her mother would be blameless...But it was not her fate. It was her decision. (140)

What happens to one person is felt by everyone. (147)

"Maybe happiness is just finding the right people at the right time."
"But how do you find them?"
...
"But say you do find the right people - how do you love them without smothering them?...How do you not suffocate them with all the love you've built up in their absence?"
"You don't. And that's the whole point - it works in a way it just wouldn't with other people." (176)

Love is like life but longer. (184)

Book Two (2nd person - Henry, and letters)
...you felt your heart had already stopped, and each soft thud in the dark, each faint push between your thumb and your neck, was only the ghost of your heart and its memory of something beautiful. (212)

Your hands will always remember what they couldn't do. (213)

Is it possible for love to go on if not attached to memory? (215)

You've learned since her death that everything you are afraid of will never happen. It's the events you cannot conceive of that happen. (217)

p.s. I miss her to the point that life has no meaning (239)

I told him it's a memory I can't shelve, so it just stays out. (unnumbered)

You were back in the place where your life had begun and where it had ended. (269)

And there was something different about the city - as though it had forgotten you. (269)

You were unsure which pain is worse - the shock of what happened or the ache for what never will. (272)

You remember what George said once about language, about words and sentences - like Pompeii, a world intact, but abandoned. You scramble down the words like ropes, he said. You dangle from sentences. You drop from letters into pools of what happened.
Language is like drinking from one's own reflection in still water. We take from it only what we are at that time. (274)

Everything had changed except you. (280)

Book Three
The faces are not detailed because the Greeks understood that one person's experience is everyone's.
We all sit down to the same meal, but at different times. (297)

Nobody will know that you're really an old man, a ruined man with a sadness so deep it's like unbreakable strength. (311)

It's strange how after someone dies, we sometimes learn things about them we didn't know when they were living. But for those left behind, even the smallest new detail is heavy enough to smash what is left of the heart. (319)

You wonder how long it takes to be happy again.
...
Wishes are cast like nets. (324)

The heart of the city is a church, a place where wishes are scattered by tolling bells. (328)

And there is no real life, except what we imagine. (330)

Nothing but the quiet fantasy of guessing what comes next. (332)

It's impossible to love someone after they've died. And that's why it hurts so much. (355)

It's something you feel, like a weight in both hands; it's the faith that embodies God but incorporates logic.
And there are hands we live between that open and close. (360)

We see in others what we want and what we fear. (367)

Humans may come and go - but the thread of hope is like a rope we pull ourselves up with. (367)

Your stillness is no longer despair but patience.
...
To love again, you must not discard what has happened to you, but take from it the strength you'll need to carry on. (372)

"Love is most nearly itself / When here and now cease to matter." -T.S. Eliot show less

I don't read a lot of short stories. I tend to have a fondness for huge tomes that I strengthen my arms with by dragging them around with me wherever I go (they're too hard to read in bed, though - a problem). I like short stories, but sometimes they just end too fast and I want more. There are exceptions to this - I love Hemingway's spare stories and now I'm adding Simon Van Booy to this list.

At their core, these stories are about loneliness, the yearning for connection, the difficulty of show more making it and keeping it. In many ways these are people who can't quite remove themselves from the center of their own universe, can't quite let go and allow themselves to see what the world has on offer. Loneliness and longing define them and when they find a connection it is one of life's minor miracles for them.

All of this could be sentimental and sappy, but in Van Booy's hands it is not. Although at times it feels like he's trying just a little too hard, those moments are far overshadowed by his beautiful use of language. Most of all this reminds me of my Mississippi grandmother, Jesse Scarbrough.

My grandfather died relatively young and grandmother continued living her life alone - teaching and, after she retired, traveling all over. She used to always say that she "didn't need an old man to take care of." And then on one of her trips she met her second husband, Vernon. They were both in their seventies and had known each other in college - grandmother and grandaddy double dated with Vernon and his wife. Long story short they fell in love and had about fifteen glorious years together before Vernon died.

They were both amazing people - kind, loving, and giving. I can remember always thinking of them at times in my life when I was alone and lonely and felt like that would never change. I'd think, "Remember grandmother - it ain't over 'til its over." They taught me a lot about being open to love and connectedness and living in the joy of that. It's a lovely memory and was quite happy to read stories that evoked that for me. Thank you, Mr. Van Booy. show less

On the way back home through the dusk, she’s going to ask her father for the story of how he met her mother. All she knows is that someone fell, and that everything beautiful began after. – from Everything Beautiful Began After, Prologue -

Three people’s lives intersect in Athens, Greece one summer.

Athens has long been a place where lonely people go. A city doomed to forever impersonate itself, a city wrapped by cruel bands of road, where the thunder of traffic is a sound so constant show more it’s like silence. Those who live within the city itself live within a cloud of smoke and dust – for like the wild dogs who riddle the back streets with hanging mouths, the fumes linger, dispersed only for a moment by a breath of wind or the aromatic burst from a pot when the lid is raised. – from Everything Beautiful Began After, page 11 -

Rebecca is an artist from Paris who has come to the Mediterranean to paint – but she is also searching for herself among the Greek ruins. George, a southerner from the United States who grew up in New England boarding schools, is also searching for identity. Brilliant in language, but lost in alcohol, he is looking for acceptance and the love that has so far eluded him. Henry is an archeologist who carries the guilt of his brother’s death – more than the bones of ancient people, it is forgiveness he really seeks. These three characters meet by chance, but are drawn to each other – three damaged people who are looking for deeper meaning in their lives.

Simon Van Booy’s novel unfolds slowly, weaving back and forth in time, giving glimpses of the characters’ lives and uncovering their secrets and desires. Readers familiar with Van Booy’s short stories will recognize the themes of identity, love, grief and the power of human connection as familiar. Van Booy’s prose has a poetic rhythm to it. He uses simple, yet powerful, sentence structure to create beautiful imagery, effortlessly drawing the reader into the world of the characters.

One strong theme in the novel is that of fate vs. choice. Rebecca is not a believer in fate. Abandoned by her mother, she sees the future as a series of personal choices – yet, she of all the characters, is the most impacted by chance.

Rebecca told herself that she did not believe in fate. She believed that she alone was responsible for everything that happened to her. If there was such a thing as fate, she thought, her mother would be blameless. It would have been her fate to abandon her daughters.

But it was not fate.

It was her decision. – from Everything Beautiful Began After, page 140 -

Van Booy also examines childhood experiences and how they impact adult lives. Each of the characters has had childhood losses: Rebecca’s loss of mother, George’s loss of parental love, and Henry’s loss of his brother. Those losses effect how each character is able to form connections to others and open their hearts to love. Van Booy weaves his narrative to allow the reader access to the characters’ deepest fears by showing their pasts. Some of the most moving passages in this novel revolve around the parent-child relationship.

A novel like Everything Beautiful Began After always risks becoming maudlin or depressing. But, Van Booy’s talent carries the book from despair to hope.

After every chapter of devastation, there is rebuilding.

It happens without thought.

It happens even when there is no guarantee it won’t happen again.

Humans may come and go – but the thread of hope is like a rope we pull ourselves up with. – from Everything Beautiful Began After, page 367 -

Van Booy manages to surprise his reader with subtle twists and turns of plot. He gives his characters room to grow. He enthralls with simplicity and careful, eloquent description of the small things in life.

And he is enchanted by the beauty of small things: hot coffee, wind through an open window, the tapping of rain, a passing bicycle, the desolation of snow on a winter’s day. – from Everything Beautiful Began After, page 401 -

I wondered whether Van Booy had the ability to pull off a novel-length work. But I should not have ever doubted his talent. I loved this novel as I have loved Van Booy’s short story collections. This is a gorgeous meditation on love and human connection, a poetic piece of work which completely captured me. Readers who are drawn to literary fiction and who seek out novels that transport them, will not want to miss Everything Beautiful Began After.

Highly recommended. show less