Customer Reviews

The Republic of Love

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"As a baby, Tom Avery had twenty-seven mothers. So he says. That was almost forty years ago." As opening paragraphs go, if this one doesn't make you want to read on, then nothing will. I started reading this in bed one Sunday morning and didn't get up until it was finished.

Fay McLeod wakes up one morning knowing she no longer loves the man in the bed beside her, with whom she has lived for five years. Truth be known, he no longer loves her, either; their relationship had just slipped into complacency and joint commitments. But alone, she finds she really is just one half of an incomplete couple. Where does one find love? How does one remain in love? After all, as the title suggests, it's everyone's right to experience love.

Fay is close to her family; her parents, brother, his family, and her sister. She has many friends, mainly through her absorbing work as a folklorist with a special interest in mermaids. Her work links her to the past, and to fantasy - could she be using that to escape reality?

Before reaching forty, Tom Avery has been divorced three times. He hadn't chosen partners very wisely, but at least he's remained friendly with two of his ex-wives and they are part of his extensive social circle. Without actually vowing to never marry again, he knows he isn't good marriage material, and spends most Friday nights attending singles meetings, supposedly to learn new skills, but in reality to check out availability of potential partners. He also concentrates his energies on friends, associates and his work as the popular host of a midnight to dawn radio program.

Considering his circle, and Fay's circle contained so many people in common, it was surprising they'd never met. However, a chance encounter at the birthday party of Fay's nephew where he'd come to collect his godson and she'd come to deliver a present on the eve of a European study tour, leads to a strong mutual attraction. So strong, that after only a walk home (they lived across the street from each other) in the company of an eight year old boy, Tom tracks down her address in Europe and professes his love, a madly passionate airletter posted before allowing himself to think better of it.

What is love? In this book, Carole Shields has used none of the artifice apparent in later novels; it's just a beautifully written exploration of love, finding it, keeping it, regaining it and allowing yourself to yield to it. Around Tom and Fay, finely developed secondary characters go though their own love crises - the path of love is hardly ever smooth. It is a hopeful, heart-warming and satisfying novel. Plus you find out quite a lot about Winnepeg, mermaids and late-night radio.

Several years ago, an elderly friend recommended Carol Shields. Recently I started with "Larry's Party", which announced it was by the author of "The Stone Diaries", which in turn proclaimed to be by the author of "The Republic of Love". Since these books seem to be their own best recommendations, I'm now going to take the advice of "The Republic of Love" and look even further back into her list for "Swann" and "The Orange Fish".

In 1995 Carol Shields won the Pulitzer Prize for THE STONE DIARIES, a masterful novel that put her name at the forefront of the literary world. Three years earlier she gave us THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE, a bewitching novel that deserves as much claim and attention as its more celebrated successor. In this novel, set in a close-knit Canadian community so small that its citizens reluctantly find themselves recycling schoolmates as lovers and ex-spouses as friends, Shields tackles an ambitious task. She takes a subject as elusive, time-honored, and--oh, let's be honest--EXHAUSTED as love and infuses it with plenty of invigorating, modern insight and a great deal of graceful wit.

The novel centers around Fay, a commitment-shy folklorist specializing in mermaid studies and Tom, a late night disc jockey with no fewer than three failed marriages in his hapless past. Each struggles to achieve admission to the republic of love without relinquishing too much hard-won independence. Their small town is one where enviable and ill-fated relationships alike put themselves on involuntary display. This provides each character with a chance to scrutinize the connections that dictate the paths lives will follow as well as the opportunity to examine the tiny tugs of the human heart that disclose truths of existence. In Shields' capable hands the subject of love becomes neither one of pure romanticism nor one of unadulterated cynicism. Employing love as a central theme is something almost every writer has attempted at one time or another, often with little success. In this case, Shields ultimately and triumphantly handles it with the delicacy, tenderness, and passion of someone with the rare ability to see clearly into the core of the human heart and the even rarer ability to describe what she finds there.

I wanted to crawl into this book and pull it down on top of me. It is whimisical homage to romantic love and a wonderful illumination of the underpinnings of community. It's one of those novels I read every couple of years, just for kicks.

I'm quite a sucker for old-fashioned love stories (having written one myself, as yet unpublished) but it's hard to find good ones. Of course there are mushy and formulaic romance novels galore but they are not what I'm talking about.

As Carol Shields herself writes here, "Love is not, anywhere, taken seriously. It's not respected. It's the one thing that everyone in the world wants but for some reason people are obliged to pretend that love is trifling and foolish. Work is important. Living arrangements are important. Wars and good sex and race relations and the environment are important, and so are health and fitness. Even minor shifts of faith or political intention are given a weight that is not accorded love. We turn our heads and pretend it's not there, the thunderous passions that enter a life and alter its course. Love belongs in an amateur operetta, on the inside of a jokey greeting card or in the annals of an old-fashioned poetry society. Moon and June and spoon and soon ... It's womanish, it's embarrassing, something jeer at, something for jerks."

That's very well put.

So to the story of Tom and Fay in Winnipeg, Canada, drifting through unsuccessful love affairs and marriages until fate makes their paths cross. Both are appealing and I believed in the passion that seizes them. I was a little less happy with the plot machinations. Of course, Shields follows the ancient formula of boy meets girl, boy parts from girl, boy and girl get back together. But she moves her characters around a bit like chessman -- the plot feels a little clunky -- you can see all the moving parts a bit too much. The minor characters in this book don't shine very much -- another weakness.

However, I have to applaud this novel. I read it on a plane and it kept my interest across the Atlantic. Bravo for a serious attempt to tackle love in an adult and intelligent way.

A friend told me that this book was disappointing to her in comparison to "The Stone Diaries" - I find this hard to imagine, I loved the story, the characters, the setting, the realness and can hardly wait to read more of Shield's books. The job choices for the characters, mermaid researcher and dj, made a charming combination, not your normal 9 - 5 world!

THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE is a pleasant diversion by the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning "The Stone Diaries." While this book is an enjoyable read, those who are expecting the quality of the latter may be disappointed. While the book contains Carol Shields' graceful and eloquent prose typical of all of her books, the plot is somewhat thin and superficial. The characters are well developed in the first part of the book and the pace is leisurely until the last few chapters. At that point, the plot is wrapped up so quickly it was as if the author decided that she had something better to do and needed to get this book out of the way.

By usual standards, the book is certainly nicely done, however it pales in comparison to Ms. Shields' later works.

The writing is quite highbrow, full of five dollar words and complicated sentences. This does make a rather nice change from all of the teen fiction I have been reading. For the most part, I really loved her writing style. Every so often, a particular sentence would strike me as a bit over the top, as though big words had been used solely for the sake of using big words.

The narrative of the story moves along at a good pace, especially through the first half of the book. The format of the story, which follows the two main characters in alternating chapters, propels the reader forward, curious to discover how and when they will actually meet. I really loved the thought-provoking ideas about love, serendipity, marriage and being single that are woven throughout this novel. The theme of the interconnectedness of people's lives and the degrees of separation was particularly fascinating. It reminded me a lot of a slightly darker and more literary version of When Harry Met Sally, only not the plot with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. It called to mind the little insert stories about how people met.

I highly recommend this to literary fiction fans. For those who like easy reads, not so much. This is an excellent novel!

"The Stone Diaries", winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize, was my introduction to the author Carol Shields. In "The Republic of Love", Carol Shields depicts two people, after having been brought up by two totally different families, living their lives according to their careers and/or with the benefits of family and the responsibilities or trials and tribulations of family. She humanizes both parties with in depth conversations and/or thoughts and you end up routing for both by the end of the book. These two people end up serendipitously meeting at a family gathering of sorts and sparks fly. Illustrates how love alone is not enough to bridge familial and/or self-doubt issues.

"Sheilds instills confidence in us all that love at first sight is still a possibility. In fact, The Republic of Love forces us to ask the question, "Is there really any other kind of love?"

Few authors have been able to create characters that so effortlessly experience the many facets of moden love. Allow yourself to drift back and forth inside the hearts and minds of Eve and Tom. You will not easily forget them."

A friend told me that this book was disappointing to her in comparison to "The Stone Diaries" - I find this hard to imagine, I loved the story, the characters, the setting, the realness and can hardly wait to read more of Shield's books. The job choices for the characters, mermaid researcher and dj, made a charming combination, not your normal 9 - 5 world!