Fridays With Carol Shields: The Republic of Love
It’s #FridaysWithCarolShields, and I started re-reading The Republic of Love this week. I’m only about a quarter of the way through (I’m also trying to finish Lincoln in the Bardo!), but I’ll go ahead and put this up there with Small Ceremonies and The Stone Diaries as one of my favorites. The first time I read this book, I was almost engaged to my now-husband; he used to pick me up at the Alewife T station after I commuted back from Boston’s North End, and I have a very specific memory of reading this book while waiting on a bench near the parking garage (by the Bertucci’s if anyone cares). We were really young, and the characters – now just a tinge younger than I am now – seemed “old,” yet somewhat familiar…since this is a book about love, after all. It’s also a book about failed relationships, about the parent-child bond, and a lot about serendipity and “right place, right time.” In The Republic of Love, we’ve got Fay and we’ve got Tom – as well as all the people in their familial and romantic orbits – and soon enough, Shields lets the two of them meet. This is their story.
She writes, “To be a romantic is to believe anything can happen to us…Romance, Fay knows, grabs on to people like a prize deformity; it keeps them on edge, taunts them, then slitheringly changes shape and withdraws. Romance—that holy thing. A cycle of rupture and reconciliation.” Ah, love.
(What is also on display in this book – seemingly more so than others because I think there might be more tangential characters in Republic – is Shields’ superb ability to write dialogue and tease out funny little character traits from the most inconsequential of people (to the plot, I mean). Tom is a late-night DJ and poses a question to callers every night…this photo shows a snippet of who Shields “lets” call in. Random? Totally. But I think she must have had such an astute ear for conversation (people are so weird) – she was probably a bit of an eavesdropper too. [My favorite is the guy who thinks he “looks like a nerd” in the shower.]
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