FOREIGN AFFAIRS

by Alison Lurie
 
Another Pulitzer Prize winner, I picked this book up for no other reason than that it won in the year I was born.  And as it is my birthday month, it seemed a fun and random way to celebrate 32!
 
Set in London in the mid-80s, the story follows two American professors spending their spring term researching their books.  One is a single, middle-aged, Anglophile woman studying children’s rhymes and folk tales.  She is moderately successful in her field, but feels invisible to the rest of the world because of her marital status, average looks and advancing age (many characteristics shared with the author).  The other protagonist is a young man studying 18th Century drama, who has separated from his wife just before leaving on this trip, and can’t stand anything about London.
 
Over the course of the book they both meet people they eventually fall for but for a book with the word ‘affairs’ in the title, this book is remarkably free of sexual encounters or even romantic ones.  The main subject seems much more related to the American experience of London when one has more than a few days to explore.
 
The most striking aspect of this book was the time-capsule element in little details like the plane having a non-smoking section, or the plot turning on how difficult it was to get a message to someone who wasn’t at home.  I enjoyed the characters, and once the plot got moving I was very engaged, but it definitely felt like a different style of writing than what is currently in vogue. (Lily)