Which Brings Me to You

Paperback

Julianna Baggott , Steve Almond 저자(글)

Arrow Books · 2007년 02월 01일

책 소개

John and Jane's time in a cloakroom clearly isn't the beginning of anything real, even they know that. When they manage to pull back, literally, it occurs to them that they might start this whole thing over, properly. This is a novel providing insights into the ways of mating and dating in a post-feminist time.
JODI DUNNE Dear Jane, I was sixteen when I started dating Jodi Dunne. It astounds me now to think of myself at sixteen. It astounds me to think of sixteen. I see these kids in my neighborhood, scuffing along in giant boots, their hair all sculpted with gunk, like they'll never take one on the chin. Sad. Jodi was a year behind me. We sat across from each other in secondperiod art. The class was taught by this old guy, Mr. Park, who was famous at our school for being a flamer. He wore a beret and called us children. "Children," he would say, "who on earth is going to pull down those shades?" We were all totally terrified of him. The whole class was us looking at slides of paintings, while Mr. Parks walked around and talked about how delicious they were. There was a kind of intimacy to that class, is what I'm saying. You can't put a bunch of teenagers in a dark room and show them Gauguin's nudes and not expect the sap to rise. Jodi sat pretty near the screen. The colored lights from the paintings revealed the subtler aspects of her beauty: the articulation of her nostrils, the pink swell of her lips. She had a small, exceptionally expressive mouth. And her hair. She had the greatest hair I'd ever seen, a pale orange that turned blond in summer and if you examined each individual hair (as I later did) what you saw was that the color went from rust, at the roots, to a burnished gold. If I close my eyes I can still see those things. The one thing about Jodi, she was a pretty big girl. Not fat. Not even close to fat. But wide-bottomed and fleshy. In high school, as you'll recall, you were either thin or fat. There was no real in-between category. Also, she played volleyball and hung out with the girls who played volleyball, many of whom were dorks (or whatever the female equivalent of dork is). She sometimes wore sweatpants to school. She wasn't interested in trying to doll herself up, which suggested some kind of inner strength, which, of course, most of us boys wanted nothing to do with. We wanted the pliant ones, who wore makeup and flipped their hair and chewed gum at all times so their breath wouldn't stink. The main thing, the thing I'm most ashamed to mention, is that Jodi's family didn't have much money. I knew this because I'd asked Sean Linden about her one time and he told me she lived over by Los Robles, which was this crappy part of town with one-story ranch houses. None of this should have mattered, especially her finances. But it did. You should know this: from the beginning, I was making certain kinds of judgments about Jodi, holding myself above her a little. It was a kind of disease in our family, a way of casting out weakness by assuming superiority. I knew I was attracted to Jodi the first week of class. But I put off asking her out. I started to second-guess myself. I can't imagine this comes as a terrible shock to you, given my conduct in the coat check, for which I apologize, again, profusely, and not just to you but to myself, as I can assure you I have been beating myself over the head for the crap- headed sensitivo routine I pulled, when I should have been diving into that totally adorable ocean of yours. And, if I may add, at the risk of derailing my little tram down memory lane, I can still feel the shape of you, in particular the curve of your hips, but also the dimples at the small of your back, which I did not see, only felt and imagined, and, while we're on the subject: I spent the entire flight home sniffing at my shirt, which still smelled of you, and going stiff in my window seat. But okay, enough. No seduction. We promised. So. Most afternoons I'd see Jodi and her friends camped in front of the gym in kneepads and think: she is kind of heavy, her friends are sort of lame. Four months of this nonsense. All I could manage was to stare at her every day. And she stared back. So that was our courtship. We sat in that darkened room staring at each
Two lonely, lived-in, thirty-somethings. One boring wedding. One heated encounter in a quiet cloakroom.It's not exactly the recipe for love. And John and Jane's time in a cloakroom clearly isn't the beginning of anything real; even they know that. When they manage to pull back, literally, it occurs to them that they might start this whole thing over, properly. They might try getting to know one another first. But they live on opposite sides of the country. So they agree to write.And they do. What follows is a series of traded and shared confessions: of their messy sexual and emotional histories, their first shy, callow relationships, their past errors and their big loves, their flaws and their passions. Each story of a love affair - confessed with striking honesty - reveals the ways in which both Jane and John have grown and grown up, changed and not changed, over the years; the people they hurt, the ones still bruised, the ones that bruised them. Where all of this confession will take them is the burning question behind every letter - one that can only be answered when they meet again, finally, in the flesh...This is a remarkable novel - indeed a tour-de-force - in its extraordinary well-observed insights into the way we live now, of mating and dating in a post-feminist time, of the negotiations between the sexes in the challenging world of equal but different. Written by a man and a woman, it is not only remarkable, it is unique.
Two rambunctious, romantic flameouts. One boring wedding. One heated embrace in a quiet coatroom. This is not exactly the recipe for true love. John and Jane's lusty encounter at a friend's wedding isn't really the beginning of anything with any weight to it; even they know that. When they manage to pull back, it occurs to them that they might start this whole thing over properly. They might try getting to know one another first, through letters. What follows is a series of traded confessions--of their messy histories, their past errors, their big loves, their flaws, and their passions. Each love affair, confessed as honestly as possible, reveals the ways in which Jane and John have grown and changed--or not changed--over the years; the people they've hurt, the ones still bruised. The ones who bruised them. Where all of this soul-baring will take them is the burning question behind every letter--a question that can only be answered when they meet again, finally, in the flesh.
A wonderfully observed novel of modern manners, of contemporary mating and dating, written in alternate chapters by two young writers at the peak of their form. A literary equivalent of Lloyd and Rees' Come Together.

작가정보

저자(글) Julianna Baggott

저자(글) Steve Almond

기본정보

ISBN	9780099476535 ( 0099476533 )
발행(출시)일자	2007년 02월 01일
쪽수	304쪽
크기	127 * 196 * 23 mm / 227 g
총권수	1권
언어	영어