The Scenic Route: A Novel [Paperback]

Binnie Kirshenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 2009

Divorced, alone, and unexpectedly unemployed, Sylvia Landsman flees to Italy, where she meets Henry, a wistful, married, middle-aged expatriate. Taking off on a grand tour of Europe bankrolled with his wife's money, Henry and Sylvia follow a circuitous route around the continent—as Sylvia entertains Henry with stories of her peculiar family and her damaged friends, of dead ducks and Alma Mahler. Her narrative is a tapestry of remembrances and regrets...and her secret shame: a small, cowardly sin of omission. Yet when the opportunity arises for Sylvia and Henry to do something small but brave, the refrain "if only" returns to haunt her, leaving Sylvia with one more story of love lived and lost.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. It takes skill and assurance to pull off this beguiling narrative-by-digression, a love story–cum–family history–cum–confession of sins, and Kirshenbaum (An Almost Perfect Moment) has both in plentiful supply. A romantic affair begins in Fiesole when narrator Sylvia Landsman, an out-of-work, 42-year-old New York divorcée, meets debonair Henry Stafford, a Southern-born expatriate with expensive tastes and a good nose for wine. At the outset, Henry reveals that he is married to a rich woman who permits his lavish expenditures, and yet Sylvia—cynical, wry and imbued with Jewish guilt—dares to hope that Henry will be the man who changes her life. While the lovers enact a contemporary Two for the Road in his green Peugeot, Sylvia entertains Henry with stories about her eccentric family, meanwhile disclosing her own foibles and hang-ups—including some portents about betraying her best friend, Ruby. Sylvia segues from comedic quips to sad aperçus, and from cultural markers to historical vignettes, finally confessing the sin of omission that ended her friendship with Ruby. What's crushing isn't Sylvia's secret—it's how knowledge hasn't made her wiser. There are no happy endings here; instead, Kirshenbaum delivers capital-T truths. (May)
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From Booklist

After abruptly losing her job, Sylvia escapes New York and flies to Florence. This might sound larky, but she’s carrying excess baggage literally and emotionally. She hooks up with handsome, well-off Henry, and off they go, meandering across Europe in an erotic fugue state. They even take the scenic route when it comes to sharing their family histories, skirting inconvenient facts and selecting more picturesque elements. Sylvia is stand-up-comic hilarious, going off on uproarious tangents involving everything from Raisinettes to shampoo, assimilation, and Arthur Murray dance studios, and issuing zingers of startling precision. It’s good, droll fun, until pleasure gives way to denial, lies, and desperate measures, and the full implications of their pasts emerge. Not only are Sylvia and Henry fugitives from unloving parents and their own terrible mistakes, Sylvia also carries the indelible wounds of the Holocaust. Absurdly underrated Kirshenbaum is at her darkly comic and boldly encompassing best here, diverting us with hairpin-turn humor while slipping us hard truths about memory and inheritance, betrayal and guilt, and the inevitable end of the road. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Paperback: 317 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 Original edition (May 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060784741
• ISBN-13: 978-0060784744
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #778,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Memory and Desire, May 16, 2009

By 

professor (new haven, ct) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Scenic Route: A Novel (Paperback)

The doomed love affair and the road trip are beautifully done, but this novel cuts far deeper than the surface of plot and device. It is often hilariously funny. Brilliant and biting, the comedy is dark. Kirshenbaum's characters are the imperfect beings of great literature. This is an honest articulation of the particular fears of the middle-aged. It's a mediation on memory, and how all too easily we can forget who matters and what needs to be remembered. It's about sorrow and death and the tragedy of timidity. The way it is told is ingenious. The scenic route is the narrative. It digresses, detours and turns back on itself as if by magic. Characters seem to get dropped only to reappear at that exact moment when you are ready for them to return. Snippets of memory pop in and vanish. This is a novel that needs to be read more than once or twice. I'm a big fan of Kirshenbaum's writing. This is her most ambitious book to date. It succeeds richly on every level.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Literary fiction at its best!!!, June 1, 2009

By 

Bookwoman (Fort Lee, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Scenic Route: A Novel (Paperback)

Don't read this book if you don't like brilliant fiction, hit the nail on the head dialogue, character portrayals so right-on you think Binnie Kirshenbaum has been in your living room, head, heart, and bedroom and those of your entire family.

Read 'The Scenic Route' if you do want what everyone who loves a good read wants: to be transported into the lives of people so instantly rich and full that you know them right away, in fact, they may be you.

Binnie Kirshenbaum triumphs in her writing and in her ability to see what is true and real and honest in human nature and shares that with her readers in this darkly comic and profoundly moving novel.

This book, this beautiful book, is so smart, so real in its truth, that it can both break your heart and make you smile for days.

Buy it, read it, love it!!!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars engaging character study, May 12, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Scenic Route: A Novel (Paperback)

Forty-two year old divorced Manhattanite Sylvia Landsman loses her job so she decides to go on a vacation before she walks the pavement looking for work. Sylvia knows she is being foolish as she needs to find a job, but goes off to Italy anyway. In Florence, she meets married American expatriate Henry Stafford in a café; he explains that his wealthy wife is in some remote spot in India visiting her guru.

Henry and Sylvia travel Europe together in his Peugeot that his wife bought him. A classic New York cynical Jew, Sylvia and Henry pass the drives with her telling him amusing tales about her family as well as her shortfalls including the betrayal of her best friend Ruby that ended their friendship. Sylvia secretly hopes Henry will prove her relationship guru, as she lacks the courage to pursue more than they have right now.

THE SCENIC ROUTE is an engaging character study that initially appears to be a series of vignettes, but soon ties into a profound quirky glimpse at two people falling in love, but will either have the courage to take the risky next step. Sylvia is a fascinating protagonist as she explains her failures and that of her family while internally praying Henry will proclaim she is the one; Henry proves a good listener who materialistically has everything but emotionally has little as he prays Sylvia will proclaim he is her one. Fans will appreciate this spin on romance as Binnie Kirshenbaum makes a strong case that it takes a brave soul to open one's heart and as one gets older the courage wanes.

Harriet Klausner