The final half got me. Can’t imagine what Billy and these 130 pages would be without Penny. I enjoyed this mess.

A travers 8 récits différents, Laurie Colwin met en scène les mêmes personnages : Billie, une jeune femme a priori heureusement mariée, professeure d'économie dénuée de sentimentalité, qui entretient une relation adultère avec Franck, homme plus âgé, plutôt bien marié lui aussi, au caractère plus doux et sentimental que sa maîtresse.
Another marvelous thing décortique l'attirance et le désir avec beaucoup d'acuité, de lucidité et de finesse, au moyen d'un style sec qui sied parfaitement au projet.
Laurie Colwin parle remarquablement bien du caractère insondable de l'amour, de celui qu'on aime, de l'étrangeté du sentiment amoureux qui survient ("tomber" amoureux est effectivement vécu comme une chute contre laquelle on ne peut rien), de la jalousie nécessairement inhérente à une histoire d'amour extra-conjugal.
C'est intelligent et bien écrit.
Extraits :
"Of course Francis had forgotten that in the case of true love, things simply happen - almost the only circumstances under which they do. People just look at each other in a certain way, and the signal is as unmistakable as the mating behavior of Atwater's prairie chicken".
"Of course, first kisses tell it all. They reveal, as it were, the inner man".
"It was not jealousy that lashed against Francis's heart, but anger : she never told him that she held Grey's hand or that they ever laughed. His vision of their marriage was a still photo of two people at opposite ends of the table who are silent because they have absolutely nothing whatsoever to say to one another".
"She did not know which was worse - the huge bundle of information she was constantly given about Vera, or to get no information at all. Of course, the things they really wanted to know were unaskable".
"That was the thing about a love affair. It went frame by frame, unlike ordinary life, which unrolled slowly and surely, whose high moments did not tear your heart apart when you thought of them because they were affixed, as surely as a turquoise in a silver bracelet, in context".
"After all, it was only one of five million things they did not know about one another. Marriage, of course, was as deep as a well, as rich as the unicorn tapestries and with as many stitches and as much detail. Married people suffered and rejoiced over and over and over and over again. Marriage was a trench dug by time, a straight furrow, the mighty oak that has grown year after year from a tiny acorn. Lovers were, in comparison, little scratches in the ground".
"He and Billy had nothing in common and were as different as two people can be. Yet there was no denying they had fallen in love, a process as mysterious as creating a child out of two cells. A love affair was another amazing product of human ingeniousness, like art, like scholarship, like architecture. It was a created thing with rules, language, and reference. When it was finished it lived on in its artefacts : a million memories and gestures."
"It made Billy feel light-hearted to be standing out of doors with her child. She felt she had just robbed a bank and got away with it". "Billy, who found the experience of having a baby exactly like being madly in love". ( )

Une histoire tendre et un peu amère sur les amours adultères… et qui se retrouvent devant l’écueil du « et maintenant ? »

C’est chou et doux. Un peu trop calme ( )

Contents:
My Mistress
Frank and Billy
French Movie
A Little Something
Swan Song
A Country Wedding
Another Marvelous Thing
A Couple of Old Flames

Great writing, fantastically interesting way of telling the story. I just don't feel the story, to me, it's impossible to see how these two people love each other and conduct their affair behind their spouse's backs. It's just not beliveable. ( )