Celebration

by Mary Lee Settle

Celebration chronicles the love story of a widowed American anthropologist and a Scottish geologist as well as the intertwining tales of the couple's eccentric circle of friends, which include a homosexual English aristocrat, a gargantuan African Jesuit, an editor of pornographic literature, and an overzealous CIA agent. Despite the fact that these characters live in the most murderous of centuries and have all reckoned with death in some intimate fashion, they choose to celebrate life over death.

Set in 1969, this joyful novel ends with a wedding, a funeral, and a celebration―all in London, though the celebrants hail from around the globe. Together they view the twentieth century's strangest event―the landing on the moon―a happening which seems to presage an even more displaced future.

Genres: Fiction

354 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 1995

About the author

Graduate of Sweet Briar College. Winner of the National Book Award in 1978 for Blood Tie.

Reviews

[Cam Mannino · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not generally given to “slice of life” novels, particularly ones set in the 60’s, a decade I remember vividly and frequently find either lionized or trivialized. Settle just lets the reader be there. So you hang out for a while in London with some 30-ish American, Irish, Scots and African ex-pats and a very dear, once posh, gay childhood friend as they sort out the misadventures of their 20’s - an almost Sangri-la experience in an Afghanistan-like country, a disastrous trip down the Great Rift in Africa, a Sudanese Jesuit’s you-can’t-go-home again experience, a forbidden affair on the fringes of a stuffy British Hong Kong, etc.

They are a kindly group of people unknowingly followed in slightly absurd fashion by a besotted but ambitious CIA operative and his overzealous boss. (They could have easily been eliminated in my mind – overdrawn as comic relief and not sufficiently menacing.) I liked the settings in the British Museum, a Catholic safe house for African immigrants, the serene compound high in the mountains of a fictional Afghanistan. I liked being silently included in this group of friends which encircle a complicated romance between a Scottish geologist and an American anthropology professor. If I had my druthers, I probably would eliminated the scenes with the miscellaneous tenants in their apartment building and the cartoonish CIA operatives. Maybe the deeply humane giant of a Sudanese priest was a wee bit too perfect – but I loved having him around. In fact, I liked all of them and wonder a bit about how they all turned out after the book was over – a question I’m often left with after reading really good, if not exactly great, novels like this one.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book in an upper level English course at the University of Virginia. I think the professor included it as one of our readings because Settle was a local writer, and he invited her to attend and speak at the class session in which we discussed the book. I've tried to read some of her other books, but I did not care for any of them. This book, however, has stayed with me. It is one of the most life affirming books I've ever read: although it takes place in the swinging London of the late 60's and has a diverse motley crew of characters, its message of compassion and understanding is similar to George Eliot's Middlemarch and is conveyed through the characters' interactions and sharing of their stories, not in a didactic way.

_Celebration_ is a celebration of people forming meaningful relationships with each other, both as lovers and maybe even more importantly as friends. I'd recommend it to anyone, but it might be especially meaningful to people who have suffered some sort of tragedy in their lives because it's partly about having the strength to open oneself to life again after suffering through loss and grief. I hope that my saying that doesn't make it sound like a cheesy self-help book, because I hate cheesy self-help books, but this is a novel that has a lot of meaning for me.

[Mleescott1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well,I learned that Settle never smoked pot, herself, for one thing.... I read this over 15 years earlier, and loved it then; am loving it again now--but entirely different perspectives are unfolding to me with this second reading. A young American anthropology teacher (and doctoral candidate who, at book's start we find recovering from cancer and a hysterectomy), begins recalling her life just previous to this trauma. She revisits a stay among a Kurdish village with her geologist husband. In future, we will meet pivotal characters to whom Africa, Scotland, and Hong Kong will hold great meaning. (I can't say much without ruining the plot.)One of my favorite writers, Settle also taught in the Charlottesville/UVa area until not that long ago. I shall always regret never taking that opportunity to attend her novel-writing workshops there; she died one or two years ago.(Carpe diem!)

[Pammy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sheepishly standing with hat in hand, raking my toe in the dirt: I just didn't care for this book by an author I've most recently discovered. I'm horrified with myself! I make rash promises to re-read in a few months and see if my mindset is such that I can then grasp a book so well praised by others!
It had all the hot buttons for me: Love story of a widowed American anthropologist and a Scottish geologist intertwined with mysterious tales of their eccentric circle of friends in England, circa 1960's.
Ms Settle has lived in Turkey, England, and she confidently brings the scenes and characters and the time period eloquently to the reader. No disappointments there. I'm moving on to another of her novels. Not giving up in the least!

[Dot · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not read the book in years. The first time I read this book it struck me. Looking forward to reading again

[Enid · Rating 2 out of 5]

"About triumph over adversity, holding onto what is good, beautiful and cruel in this cruel and chaotic time . . . "