This is as perfect a story, or combination of stories, as any writer could ever dream up. A woman on her own in a Fiesole café is noticed by a man sitting at an adjoining table. He pockets a Cinzano ashtray for her (the same one in the home of almost every American who went abroad, in the smoking years gone by) and they set off in his car to aimlessly wander through Europe. He's married with a timetable; she's divorced with none. He expects luxurious accommodations; she likes an inn that looks like a cuckoo clock. He eats "almost every animal that she ever had as a pet"; she's a vegetarian. She also has layers upon layers of relations who make for hilariously disturbing stories that entertain and appall him, like a mobile Scheherazade. Too many brilliant passages to include here - there is something memorable on almost every page. ( )

Beautifully written and exquistedly observed "road novel."

Sylvia Landsman is in Italy after a divorce and meets rich, married, expatriate Henry in a cafe. They have an affair and drive through Europe. Along the way this book turns into a sort of stream of consciousness storytelling of Sylvia's family & life, where is she is half telling Henry these stories, and half telling an another person as they respond (but we never find out who that is). Mixed in is the story of her best friend, Ruby, who is manic. ( )

Also recently read, "The scenic route", this book I liked a little less than Molly Marx mainly due to the acerbic humor and dispassionate references. I did enjoy the method of storytelling that Kirshenbaum weaves, a tale of family, best friend, love and loss. The protagonist in Kirshenbaums story, Sylvia Landsman, is less likable than Molly Marx and I couldn't imaging her being my friend but the story is engaging and if you can get past her biting tongue it's a fairly good read. Again, one I would check out of the library but not rush to do so. ( )

A divorced, unemployed American woman has taken her severance and escaped to Europe, where she's always wanted to visit. While there she meets Henry, a charmer married to an absentee heiress. Sylvia and Henry drift into an affair and travel all around Europe with each other. While they travel, Sylvia narrates portions of her life for Henry, introducing him and the reader to her family and friends. As they wander arbitrarily around Europe, enjoying the monied, self-indulgent life that Henry so values, Sylvia's narrative heads off into digressions and roundabouts and back roads, telling of not only her life but that of her extended family as well.

As they travel, more and more of her life is revealed but the kicker was that I just didn't care all that much. I think Henry was meant to be portrayed as devil may care but in his twelve or so lines in the novel (only a slight exaggeration as he's not terribly present in this novel at all) he came off to me more as a selfish, unobservant, and remote git but he is definitely the perfect creation as a listener of Sylvia's tales. And Sylvia's rambling, meandering stories didn't really hold my interest as I kept putting the book down and walking away. I'm not certain it needed to be set in Europe as there was not much of a sense of place to it at all, as even Sylvia herself mentions. Embedding Sylvia's telling Henry about her family within a bigger, but not fully realized, frame of telling the whole story to her former(?) friend Ruby was distracting and seemed like the narrative equivalent of stream of consciousness' unlovely stepchild. I have other Kirshenbaum books in my tbr piles and I hope I enjoy them more than I did this one. This could always be the anomaly, correct? I guess I'm more of a direct highway route kind of person rather than a scenic route rambler. ( )

DM 12/08/09