Lucky Us [Hardcover]

Joan Silber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2001

Once upon a very recent time in New York City, there was a couple, two ordinary single people who met the way city people meet. Even though mismatched, they fell in love. And after some hesitations they decided, finally, to marry-only to look up and find their world caving in around them.

Sexy, vivacious Elisa, of the miniskirts and tiny T-shirts, still in art school and just coming off an affair with a temper-driven fellow artist, initiated things. She came on to cool, quiet Gabe who wore his hair in a graying ponytail and kept a low profile. A good bit older than Elisa-more than twenty years older, in fact-he found himself buoyed by her youth and her brashness. To her great surprise, Elisa craved Gabe's watchfulness and solicitude.

That Gabe's past included a successful drug dealing business bothered her not at all. And certainly he was unconcerned that Elisa's more current past included a lot of casual sex. Neither of them ever expected to have to answer for what had been so easy for Gabe and so enjoyable for Elisa. But truth be known, the one obvious thing they had in common was the burden their pasts suddenly put onto their future.

Joan Silber has written a love story for the turn of the twenty-first century, one that takes into rich account the styles and pressures of contemporary urban life. But more than that, she has created two characters who throb with real-life personality, passion, and courage.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An unlikely couple weather a crisis in this forthright novel about love and accommodation. Elisa, a 20-something flighty artist, and Gabe, a bookish, much older former drug dealer and ex-con, meet and fall in love in New York City. Their voices, strong and distinctive, grant immediacy to alternating chapters, in which their future takes an unexpected form. Just before they are to be married, Elisa's discovery that her name is an acronym for the AIDS test she is about to take enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay moves her to laughter. But when she discovers she is HIV positive, she turns against the stable and caring Gabe. PEN/ Hemingway Award winner Silber (for Household Words) is unsparing in her description of what it is like to live with AIDS. "I woke up further and remembered that all the moistures of my body were not simple anymore, that my leaking female self was slick with danger." Deep in denial about her mortality, Elisa betrays Gabe by reigniting an abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend, Jason, who is also living with AIDS. Her path of self-destruction is grounded in guilt, but it eventually leads to personal growth and acceptance. The sex, drugs and older man/younger woman angle are familiar themes, but Silber's tender tale of how Elisa and Gabe develop a loving, mature relationship is delivered with clear-eyed candor and not a whit of sentimentality. Agent, Geri Thoma.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

On her day job at a camera store, Elisa, a young art school graduate in New York City, meets an older man named Gabe. Serious and introspective, he's been at the store for many years and spends his leisure time reading Kafka; she's recovering from a somewhat abusive relationship and a drug-and-party lifestyle. Classic girl meets very different boy story, with the sad twist of her discovery of a positive HIV status. What keeps this novel (a follow-up to In My Other Life: Stories) from being either too sad or too maudlin is the edgy cast of the characters and their well-presented perspectives, found in alternating chapters. It's difficult to imagine that such a simple plot could yield such a profound, engaging tale. This was such a good story that I missed it when I finished reading. Recommended for all fiction collections. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: A Shannon Ravenel Book; 1st edition (October 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565123204
• ISBN-13: 978-1565123205
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,884,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joan Silber is the author of six books of fiction, most recently The Size of the World (Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize in Fiction) and Ideas of Heaven (Finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize). Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, two O. Henry Prize collections, and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction. She's known for stories that leap over long blocks of time, and this led her to write The Art of Time in Fiction. She lives in New York and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. Her website is joansilber.net.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book by a writer with authority, October 25, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lucky Us (Hardcover)

Any book by Joan Silber is one that a reader can plunge into without the slightest hesitation, as opposed to those books a reader doesn't quite trust to be the real thing. This is a tale told with easy authority requiring nothing from the reader but attention. This is a wondrful novel, as are Ms. Silber's other books. She has her own particular voice, which is recognizable anywhere, but it is never a distraction; it's just one more element that makes her work so singular. Pay no attention to the jacket flap, which is glib and cute--the book is often funny, but it's never cute. This is a love story, I suppose, but that's too simplistic a definition. Lucky Us is a reflection of life as we live now, made utterly compelling by the depth of Ms. Silber's fully imagined characters. It is imppossible to put it down after the first sentence! Enjoy it!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modern Day Love Story, April 23, 2002

By 

sbarbu NDP World Lit 2 (Pontiac, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lucky Us (Hardcover)

"Lucky Us" is a great contemporary love story. I randomly selected this novel from the library, and I found myself unable to put it
down. The story was intriguing and exceptionally touching. Gabe and Elisa are an incrediably mismatched couple that face the pressures and problems of modern day relationships. You'll find yourself curious to know the outcome of Elisa's attitude towards life after being infected with HIV. Along with how this issue will affect their future as a couple. Also, will their past burdens affect their personalities, decisions, and roles in life? Joan Silber's lively characters and lovely prose make every page of this book a pleasure to read.

5.0 out of 5 stars Lucky Us thanks to Joan Silber, October 29, 2011

By 

Kathleen Maher (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lucky Us (Kindle Edition)

"Lucky Us" is told in alternating sections by a midddle-aged man who works in a fictional yet recognizable camera store in New York City and a young graduate of the city's School of Visual Arts who begins working there part-time. It is a modern love story: The painful side is told as beautifully as the ecstatic side.
Gabe is in his late forties in 2002 and Eliza in her early to mid-twenties. Upon extricating herself from a physically abusive relationship with an artist about her age, she sees self-contained, calm, intelligent Gabe as "glamorous." It intrigues her the way he spends his lunch hour reading Kafka in the nearby park (also recognizable--I live in the neighborhood.)
He's aware of her as brisk and leggy and more than capable and when she invites him out for a drink, he supposes she wants advice on how to win back her old boyfriend. To his surprise and delight, she's interested in him.
After initiating a sexual relationship with him, Eliza learns he went to prison in the 1970s for selling marijuana. Although he doesn't think of his sentence as harrowing and has no interest in discussing the scary but sad and dull eight months, his time in jail has irrevocably affected his personality.
Early on he lost the vanity and vaster scope of a young man's dreams and has lived quietly, contented to read and listen to jazz. He's sensible and secure and is determined not to be rendered "pathetic by hope." His self-awareness extends further--he's refuses to succumb to sour disappointment. For a man in later middle age, these are admirable goals. His perception of himself in the world, what's happened and what hasn't, are realistic and unassuming. He's had his fun but doesn't expect much more.
Eliza doesn't change him as much as she might like: she knows she's not this great gift that's fallen into his half-finished life, but she enjoys being sexy and flirty and delighting him. She has interesting friends, no family to speak of, and after the camera shop, begins working in an art gallery for even less money.
A cautionary note here: I find Joan Silber's musical prose so fascinating that I read everything I can find she's written repeatedly. I rank her novel "Ideas of Heaven" as her best, and among the best novels I know, but I've only read it a few times. "Lucky Us," even though it lacks the breadth and range of her novels written as linking novellas, was so irresistible and somehow comforting to me that I read it ten times in succession--more or less, but close to ten times.
Eliza's voice is different than Gabe's but both are identifiable as Joan Silber's fiction. She's bratty and clever, inconsiderate, brave, and reckless. The differences between her generation and Gabe's are there, but not especially marked. It's probably better to understate this than overdo, but I thought Eliza might have had an a more enthusiastic attachment to the cultural headliners of her coming-of-age. That may have distracted, however, from the major factor affecting her generation, which is HIV. The drugs to maintain and contain the disease are available. But she's astounded and terrified to learn she's positive while preparing to marry Gabe. Before long she becomes so desperate and defiant that she returns to her old boyfriend Jason, who's glad to have her and not abusive this time around--he's also positive, quite likely from her influence. Unlike Eliza, he acts undaunted. She cheats for a brief phase but soon leaves Gabe to live with Jason. Eliza explains that she and Jason share one thing: their sexual abandon and interest in heightened sensation. They already know each other and are not in love. They're more, Eliza says, like roommates with a common hobby, although that hobby takes almost all their time.
Joan Silber describes the sex between Eliza and Gabe as physically tamer but still erotic and--most of all--loving.
Eliza does love Gabe, who understandably suffers and survives a long, painful summer knowing she's nearby, risking her life and making him miserable after many quiet and not unhappy years.
The story is clear and interesting and the two characters both (obviously) fascinated me.
My assessment may not be all that helpful to the majority of readers because it's so passionate. But Joan Silber's fiction lifts my spirits every time.