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Friends and Romans
254 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1934
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 14, 2020
This is a relatively rare book, so you may not find many copies of it sitting around waiting for you to buy them, and I won't mind telling you how it all ends, so yeah, there's a spoiler lurking below.
The basic story is that a famed concert pianist and composer, Marie Manfred, goes on vacation to rest from her exhausting life of concertizing. Well, also to kind of escape the public eye after a sort of tell-all book about her, Gaudy Calliope, was published by a "friend" of hers.
The narrative is first-person, from her point of view, and the era is 1930s Italy. (The period we now tend to think of as "between the wars", so there are fascists all over the place, or at least they get mentioned a lot.) In Rome for her getaway, Marie is visited by a never-ending string of friends, and a new lover, Ricardo. They carry on a bit for many chapters as characters come and go across the stage. During a little evening party late in the book, one of the guests is targeted by an assassin (but isn't hit). Near the last part of the novel, Marie also attends the funeral of a famous diva, for which she flies to Paris briefly. Even though she's in love with Ricardo, she (rather half-heartedly, in my opinion) agonizes over whether to give up her concert career to marry him. And he's pretty hot on her, so...
After finishing this book I wasn't really sure what to make of it. I rather liked it, but wasn't bowled over. There are some nice scenes and some good writing, with clever spots. But a lot of it wasn't terribly memorable, although the bones of the story are sure to rattle around in my subconscious for years.
One of the minor characters, Emily Wolverstone, was actually my favorite of the novel and I wished she came on stage more often. Emily is the daughter of one of Marie's former lovers. Now a woman in her early twenties, she is a sculptor who rides a motorcycle and has decided that Marie is basically her step-mother, or should be. Emily pops up briskly a few times through the novel, never staying long enough for me to fully admire her.
The author is someone worth knowing about, as she led a full life and was well-known. You can read a little about her on the Neglected Books blog review of her other novel, The Barbarians, or on the University of Nebraska blog: Remembering Virginia Faulkner.
At this point, I've read one other Faulner novel, My Hey-Day, or The Crack-Up of the International Set.
The basic story is that a famed concert pianist and composer, Marie Manfred, goes on vacation to rest from her exhausting life of concertizing. Well, also to kind of escape the public eye after a sort of tell-all book about her, Gaudy Calliope, was published by a "friend" of hers.
The narrative is first-person, from her point of view, and the era is 1930s Italy. (The period we now tend to think of as "between the wars", so there are fascists all over the place, or at least they get mentioned a lot.) In Rome for her getaway, Marie is visited by a never-ending string of friends, and a new lover, Ricardo. They carry on a bit for many chapters as characters come and go across the stage. During a little evening party late in the book, one of the guests is targeted by an assassin (but isn't hit). Near the last part of the novel, Marie also attends the funeral of a famous diva, for which she flies to Paris briefly. Even though she's in love with Ricardo, she (rather half-heartedly, in my opinion) agonizes over whether to give up her concert career to marry him. And he's pretty hot on her, so...
After finishing this book I wasn't really sure what to make of it. I rather liked it, but wasn't bowled over. There are some nice scenes and some good writing, with clever spots. But a lot of it wasn't terribly memorable, although the bones of the story are sure to rattle around in my subconscious for years.
One of the minor characters, Emily Wolverstone, was actually my favorite of the novel and I wished she came on stage more often. Emily is the daughter of one of Marie's former lovers. Now a woman in her early twenties, she is a sculptor who rides a motorcycle and has decided that Marie is basically her step-mother, or should be. Emily pops up briskly a few times through the novel, never staying long enough for me to fully admire her.
The author is someone worth knowing about, as she led a full life and was well-known. You can read a little about her on the Neglected Books blog review of her other novel, The Barbarians, or on the University of Nebraska blog: Remembering Virginia Faulkner.
At this point, I've read one other Faulner novel, My Hey-Day, or The Crack-Up of the International Set.
Displaying 1 of 1 review