Joan Frank (1)

The Outlook for Earthlings by Joan Frank is a highly recommended poetic novel about the lifelong friendship between two women.

"The Outlook for Earthlings traces an unusual, difficult friendship across a lifetime, between women of stunningly opposite natures." Melanie Taper is timid, but she also has an innate insight into the human condition. It seems that she has hidden her inner strength from those around her. Scarlet is the exact opposite of Melanie. She is impetuous, determined, and passionate, so she is also often shocked by Melanie's passivity. The two cling to their friendship even though they don't understand each other and they each have their own separate needs. Their lack of accord results in each of them silently taking exception to the nature of the other oblivious to what they each need. Ultimately, it considers beginnings and endings, contemplates who ultimate measures the worth of their life, and the restraint of friendship.

The novel spans decades, starting in the 1960s to the 2000s with an epilogue in 2013. We meet Melanie and Scarlet as girls and touch base with them through adulthood. Frank perfectly and vividly captures the decades in various chapters. We know the thoughts of both women and their inner dialogues as we follow their lives and the decisions they make. We also see the compromises and concessions that they make, especially Melanie, as they work through their life and loves. The characters are both well-developed and accurately portrayed as individuals with very different personalities.

The writing in The Outlook for Earthlings is phenomenal, poetic, descriptive, and poignant. This novel is almost perfectly written to be read and shared in a women's book club because of the differences between these two women and their long-term, yet misunderstood, friendship with each other. During this time of political chaos and covid, where people are so polarized and not respecting the views and opinions of other people, a novel like this speaks to the heart of the matter. We can't know what someone thinks without talking to them, asking what they need, and then truly listening to them and accept their statements. We are all entitled to our own opinions and views, but we are not entitled to pin our ideas on others. Friends, real friends, will allow each other to be and believe. A book club could find fodder for discussions during more than one meeting here and perhaps even enlighten each other why others believe what they do. No spoilers, but there is a whole lot more going on that simply a difference of opinion in this touching novel.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Joan Frank and Regal House Publishing
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2020/10/the-outlook-for-earthlings.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3595854304… (plus d'informations)

Melanie and Scarlet met in high school and were lifelong best friends. Like many long term friendships, theirs had good and bad times. Deep down they each questioned the others attitude and life decisions but they remained friends and shared their deep secrets with each other. The reader is able to see them at their youngest and near the ends of their lives thinking back on the past. Their friendship is interesting because their mindsets about life and the men in their lives are totally opposite but even so they remain friends Scarlet realized too late that friendship was about support not about judging personal decisions. Overall, i thought that this was an intense look at female friendship and its importance in women's lives.… (plus d'informations)

What happens when introverts age? If they've lost the person in their life who keeps them tethered to other people, they may find themselves retreating from the world, worrying about their aloneness but not knowing how to change it or in actuality having more than a passing desire to do so. In Joan Frank's novel, All the News I Need, a meditation on aging, on connection and relationship, and on the way that life can always deliver surprise and change, two characters look back at their past lives, wallow in their presents, and finally take a chance on the future.

Fran is a widow in her fifties. Painfully forthright and sometimes a little crass, Fran has maintained a friendship of sorts with her late husband Kirk's good friend Ollie. Ollie is a single gay man in his early sixties. He's a worrier, shy, introspective, and a little persnickety. The two of them are quite alone except for each other and as they approach aging, they vow to remain each other's human connection through their carefully laid out Rules for Aging. These two lonely people are set in their ways, shut off from the richness of life, plodding towards the quiet unremarked end until Fran decides that they should travel to Paris together, jolting both of them out of their routines. Easy travel partners they are not though, exploring Paris by revisiting the places Fran and Kirk once knew, each irritated and bothered by the other in ways that only travel can expose so clearly. For both Fran and Ollie, there is a deep sadness in the past, of those they loved and lost, and in the loss of the potential for what was.

The novel is very much a character driven one focused on two solitary people who spend much of the book alone together. Chapters alternate in perspective between Fran's and Ollie's musings on their own situation, the minor (and major) annoyances of the other person, and on their own grief and loss. The writing, especially in the beginning is almost staccato in style. This clipped, fragmentary style can contrast a little oddly with the long, descriptive passages fleshing out Ollie and Fran's characters but most often it makes the story feel very present. Fran and Ollie don't start out as the most likeable characters and their relationship, despite its long term, often feels dutiful, an obligation to their shared memory of Kirk. And the denouement of their Paris trip is not unexpected. But Frank does a wonderful thing for the reader, following Fran and Ollie into promise and happiness, moving them past the small, disheartening stagnation of the beginning of the novel. Slow to get into, the payoff in the end makes this a worthwhile read.… (plus d'informations)