A Review of Enough about Love by Hervé Le Tellier (translated by Adriana Hunter)

Enough About Love

4.5 out of 5: In true Oulipo fashion, Hervé Le Tellier’s latest novel, Enough About Love, is a constraint-filled endeavor. With a structure inspired by a game of Abkhazian dominoes, Le Tellier’s six protagonists combine and recombine in every possible two-person configuration in short chapters titled according to their major players (e.g., Yves and Anna, Thomas and Louise). The chapters follow quickly upon one another and, as they are often dominated by dialog, give the flavor of a dramatic performance rather than a traditional novel. Indeed, Enough about Love would make for a very entertaining play, and Le Tellier’s self-imposed constraints never get in the way of the story.

The novel’s main action consists of two overlapping love triangles involving two married couples and two single men, all middle-aged. The constantly morphing relationships illustrate various forms of love, including married love, adulterous love, and jealous love. The overall effect is kaleidoscopic, the characters’ ever-shifting emotions and interactions slide against each other to reveal different shades and nuances. Enough About Love’s complex structure supports and enhances its story, and Adriana Hunter’s adept English translation delivers all the playfulness and complexity of the original.

Within the novel’s larger framework, Le Tellier cleverly embeds a couple stand-out set pieces. One is a public reading by Yves of an essay he wrote on “foreignness” juxtaposed in two-column format with a running internal monologue by Yves’s lover’s husband, who’s decided to attend the reading in an act of curiosity or martyrdom or both. The second set piece is a book written by Yves’s for his lover Anna composed of forty of Yves’s most significant memories of Anna. In an audacious move, Le Tellier includes Yves’s entire book (all 25 pages of it) within this novel. The result is a stunningly intimate portrayal of love, leaving the reader feeling like a voyeur who stumbled upon an open bedroom window, uncomfortable and thrilled at the same time.

The two female protagonists, Anna and Louise, share too many similarities, including fashion tastes, high-powered careers, and dominant personalities. More contrast would have been welcome in these characters, but this is a small complaint in a book filled with so many wonders. Highly recommended.

A Review of The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer

The Marriage Artist: A Novel

4 out of 5: The Marriage Artist, Andrew Winer’s latest novel, weaves together two love stories, one contemporary and one historical. As Daniel Lichtmann, a modern-day art critic, seeks the truth behind his wife’s recent suicide, he discovers a back story that originates in Vienna before World War II and continues through the Holocaust. Winer’s portrayal of love and marriage in difficult circumstances is nuanced and intelligent. The Marriage Artist avoids syrupy, sentimental romances in favor of complicated, and often doomed, relationships that reflect the idiosyncrasies of their participants: “[W] hen we love we are not really looking to see something new, but rather our own ideas embodied in the other person—qualities that awaken echoes already resounding in us.” This finding of ourselves within those we love is an important concept explored by The Marriage Artist.

Along with love, art is a recurring motif across the decades of this novel, beginning with the beautiful illuminated marriage contracts made by Josef Pick, a Jewish artist in Vienna, and continuing up to the dramatic final sculptures of contemporary artist Benjamin Wind. Eventually, this novel’s present and past love stories converge in a devastating conclusion. Overall, The Marriage Artist is a sensitive rumination on the complex nature of love and marriage.

A Review of Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick

Foreign Bodies
4 out of 5: Cynthia Ozick’s latest novel, Foreign Bodies, is a reworking of Henry James’s The Ambassadors. Middle-aged, unmarried Bea is sent to Paris by her volatile brother Marvin to rescue Marvin’s son from a life of dissipation and from the clutches of an older woman. The story unfolds in the year 1952 through a combination of letters and shifting narrative perspectives. Even a charlatan doctor, the temporary lover of Marvin’s daughter, gets a turn as the protagonist. Ozick’s prose is complex and poetic; it’s infused with a rhythmic musicality that, while striking, sometimes loses its meaning: “Grief is nightmare, grief is gargoyle: the shock of fresh bereavement must be stirring up such grotesqueries of criminality.”

Like a Gothic cathedral, Foreign Bodies is a beautifully intricate construction, filled with endless nooks and crannies that repeatedly echo the more general motifs. The ever-shifting perspective, while masterfully executed, does not linger on any character long enough to engage the reader. The resulting emotional distance results in an admirable book that’s not likely to inspire a deep emotional response.

A Review of Where We Know: New Orleans As Home

Where We Know: New Orleans As Home
4 out of 5: This anthology, edited by David Rutledge and titled Where We Know: New Orleans as Home, collects essays and two short stories about the city of New Orleans. Most essays are contemporary and focus on the city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but a handful are historical, including essays by Barbara Bodichon and Dudley Warner, first published in 1867 and 1887, respectively.

As New Orleans rebuilds after Hurricane Katrina, some stay in the city, some return to the city, and some decide to leave the city forever. Where We Know captures all these various voices and reveals the diverse emotions surrounding this culturally complex American city. Essayist Anne Gisleson notes about post-Katrina New Orleans that “the city is alive in a new sort of way … [with] a sense of hope, opportunity and purpose I never felt growing up here.”

As I’ve come to expect from Chin Music Press, Where We Know is gorgeously designed. The book’s front and end papers reproduce full-color sections of old maps of New Orleans. Quotes about the city from its famous citizens and visitors—dating from 1721 to 2009—are interspersed throughout. A map in the front of the book pinpoints the exact locations in the city that form the settings of the book’s essays and stories, and a few essays are even accompanied by color photographs. Thanks to this thoughtful design, Where We Know is as rewarding to look at and to hold as it is to read.