Enchanted Prose

A painterly, epistolary, poetic memoir chronicling an expat’s love affair with Paris (2012-2020):                                     

Chers Lectures (Dear Readers),

“Paris is truly enchanted” in artist/writer Janice MacLeod’s 140 “painted letters”: calligraphy pen and watercolor illustrations enveloping charming, uplifting, catchy prose. Dear Paris: The Paris Collection Letters is a creative memoir spanning eight years of a Canadian expat’s life as an “urban walker” with a “romantic heart” in what MacLeod exudes is “the most romantic city in the world.” You may disagree, as plenty of bucket-list travel websites have other opinions. When you read MacLeod’s perspectives on why “Paris is a magical city,” treated on every page to its Joie de Vivre culture and attitudes, you might change your mind.

“I love her,” MacLeod says, despite the city’s “bloodbath” history, which makes many letters historically interesting. Her observations, paintings, and reflections absorb that history, giving depth to a wide range of subjects in the City of Light that has drawn artists and writers to it for centuries. “I love her through all of it, perhaps because of this.” You’ll find her musing on the 1920’s Lost Generation when F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived in Paris, as did Hemingway with his first wife Hadley and Jack “Bumby” their first son. You’ll also be taken to the Beat Generation, the Belle Époque, Napoléon Revolution, Bastille Day. “History is everything and everywhere in Paris.”

 “Are we allowed to behold such splendor, allowed to be this happy?” she asks. Her answer: “Yes! Oui! Weee!” See why you’ll get hooked?

You can see examples of the letters on MacLeod’s Etsy website https://www.etsy.com/shop/JaniceMacLeodStudio, which she explains in a crisp, engaging introduction was the genesis of this unusual collection that began in 2011 when she left her Creative Director advertising job in Los Angeles (formerly copywriter) to “become an artist.” She broke new ground when she conceived of the first letter-writing subscription service on the crafty website. A pen-pal service that sends out monthly letters that can be framed, and serves as a travel memoir to “the most beautiful city in the world.” This is her third Paris journeying book. USA Today named her 2017 A Paris Year one of the “Top 10 Most Beautiful Books.” Wonder how they’ll rate this gorgeous Dear Paris: The Paris Letters Collection? 

Expect to gaze at and read about Parisian gardens, flowers, blossoming trees, and the changing seasons (“a vibrant costume change”); a slew of lively cafés, lingering with her coffee, patron and waiter watching; fountains (200 in Paris, here are some beautiful ones); Art Nouveau lampposts; carousels (also calling Paris the City of Carousels, all free, a “gift to citizens and visitors”); cathedrals (Notre-Dame before, capturing the 850-year-old church, and after the 2019 fire that shocked the world); iconic and not as well-known statutes and monuments; holiday celebrations (May 1 is their Labor Day, or Lily-of-the-Valley Day celebrated by giving these lovely white flowers to a friend), and her annual Bonne année et Bonne santé wishes (“Happy New Year and wishes for good health”); umbrellas in a wet city that’s freezing in the winter, colder than many “big, big cities” because of the humidity and the fact that Parisians spend their time outdoors. Dear Paris reflects that c’est la vie and laissez-faire and on every page, in every letter.

 

 

 

“Paris does something to a person. It unleashes the pent-up romantic.” Early on you’ll find whispers of a man she meets; as the years go by you’ll see she’s fallen in love with him, and has a future with him. While she respects his privacy, we’re told his name is Christophe, an expat from Poland, who works at the boucherie on the street she lives on in the Latin Quarter, Rue Mouffetard. That street in the 5^th arrondissement (district) means a lot to her, so the first letter depicts a colorful fruit stand beneath a church, a scene outside of her apartment. We also know he looks like Daniel Craig, one of the 007 actors. Check out her Instagram account and you’ll see he definitely does, which adds to the romantic sparkle of the book.

MacLeod shows us she’s become the artist she dreamed of becoming. She also knows her way around words that grab our attention, presumably a skill she carried with her from her advertising days. Passionate about her art supplies, worthy of a letter when she finds herself in heaven shopping at one of Paris’ legendary department stores, Le Bon Marché, first in the world. The deluxe stationary shop is seen as a sensual experience.

In the artist’s eyes, her “painted letters” sometimes need a finishing touch. So the collection is partly a numismatic collectors’ delight, increasingly adorned over the years with postage stamps she’s pored over to fit the subject or theme of the letter.

The letters go beyond visual and lyrical food for the soul. This being Paris, expect mouthwatering tastes at boulangeries (ubiquitous bakeries; baguettes are taken so seriously that the government limits ingredients to flour, yeast, and salt); patisseries, including the macaron craze, a “jewelry box of deliciousness”; chocolatiers; glaciers (ice cream shops); restaurants; and specialty shops.

The book is smartly designed. The handwritten inked/watercolor letters consume the right side of the page, sometimes two. For those who prefer to read them in a formal though considerably less intimate format, or in case there’s a handwritten word that’s hard to decipher (I found none), the letter is typed on the left side of the page. If you stick to the warmer-feeling letter, make sure you don’t forget to read the quote at the bottom of every left page. Each adds insight to that month’s letter, written by authors, poets, songwriters, filmmakers. Without even telling us, or painting the most famous bookstore in all of Paris, Shakespeare and Company, we gather simply from the diversity of these messaging quotes Macleod is a diverse reader of literature and culture.

Each letter is a new exploration, a new experience particularly when your way to get to know a city is by walking hours and hours until you’re feet hurt and then resting, indulging, and observing the people around you, alone or with a friend or lover.

The 140 illustrated letters are always addressed to her good friend Áine, except the one addressed to Patrice, a devoted subscriber she learned passed away in a letter from her daughter, Bernadette, who continued her mother’s Etsy subscription.

Paris is “eye candy,” “a giant Ferris wheel,” “one big plant box,” seducing us in the “City of Amour,” so each version charms us. When a letter is interspersed among all the Paris ones, written and postmarked from a different city, we’re surprised each and every time we stumble upon it – mostly from other European countries and cities, and a few Canadian and American ones. It’s as if MacLeod relishes re-falling in love with Paris, again and again.

“Joyful Rapture” is how the artist/writer describes the annual tradition of turning on the fountains. Joyful rapture also describes this special reading and visual experience.

“We must find our place in the world.” Janice MacLeod has found hers. For those who wish to travel to find theirs, she inspires us. We’re happy for her. Truth be told, we’re also a bit envious.

Lorraine

Loneliness, homelessness, music, and friends (Upstate New York, and towns south to Florida; 1994-1997): Two quotes by beloved women sum up the complex, interconnected themes Allison Larkin delves into in her heart-hitting fourth contemporary novel, The People We Keep: Mother Theresa’s “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved”; and Maya Angelou’s “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

In the Biography of Loneliness by Britain’s Dr. Fay Bound Alberti, who studies the history of Matters of the Heart, she describes the psychological aspects of loneliness as an “emotional cluster” with “pinch points.” When we meet Larkin’s sixteen-year-old protagonist, April Sawicki, she’s at her tipping point. A last straw, breaking point from deep-rooted psychological pain and loneliness symbolized by living in a trailer park in a motorhome without a motor. More profoundly, abandoned by her mother at six, and her emotionally absent father who’s spent the last months living with another woman and her sickly child. All this happened in a small, remote upstate NY town in the Adirondack Mountains, west of the Fingers Lakes region.

There’s not much sweet going on in April’s life. No wonder she’s flunking high school. Given the alarming rise in teenage loneliness, and society in general, the novel also hits at an urgent time. The range of raw emotions exposed are universally-relatable, making this heartfelt tale for young and old.

We root for April because Larkin’s writing style cuts to the chase poignantly, making us feel her pain. It’s as if the author has embraced Ernest Hemingway’s advice to “write the best story you can and write it as straight as you can.” Larkin’s prose stands out for its straightforward way of conveying weighty emotions. She makes it look easy, but as Winston Churchill wrote, “if I had more time I would have written a shorter letter.” Writing simpler to get your message across powerfully is hard. 

Noteworthy too is the ‘90s timeframe, ending when April is nineteen, when social media launched. Larkin is exploring loneliness before social media became a factor in the loneliness phenomenon, when teenagers, and too many of us, have lost the quality of interacting in person. April didn’t have any girlfriends to begin with. Small towns are gossipy, so her classmates didn’t want to be friends with her knowing how neglected she was and looked.

April’s most existentially valuable possession was her guitar, once her father’s. One day in a rage he smashed it into pieces – the final straw – setting into motion the novel’s searching-for-a-home journey: her coming-of-age, relationship journey (Parts I and II) and her musical, road-tripping one in Part II.

Fleeing meant literally becoming homeless and doing things she knew were wrong (like stealing her father’s getaway car and his cash lying around), feeling she had no other choice. Hers is a hard-knocks tale to no fault of her own.

Music is the one thing April can count on. She writes and sings melancholy songs, and plays and listens to oldies. The “sweetest song” she knows is Something in the Way She Moves. April loves this song because it makes her feel “people can fall in love and stay there.” In honor of April and one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, let James Taylor’s soothing voice give you a sense of her longing: 

April’s playlist also includes Shelter from the Storm and Buckets of Rain (Bob Dylan), and Can’t Make You Love Me (Bonnie Raitt) – songs that reveal her sad story. Yet music offers hope.

April leaves behind a boyfriend who says he wants to marry her, but she believes that’s to get her to have sex. “Sex is one thing – just putting parts together. It’s an entirely different thing to exist together.” Existing together, meaning “what would last and wear too thin to keep.”

Leaving also means leaving Margo. She owns a diner where April’s been working since eleven. Margo loves and worries about her to the “core” – the child she never had, knowing just how much love she can handle. Margo used to date her father years ago, so she understands how messed up he is. Margo is the mother-figure April lost.

On the highway, April is headed to nowhere in particular. On the road for three hours, she spots the sign for Ithaca, exits remembering Margo’s boyfriend didn’t like the town peopled with hippies, a reason she might. Larkin went to Ithaca College, turning to other writing advice to write what you know.

Describing Ithaca in a “valley with a school on both the bordering hills,” refers to Ithaca College on one side, Cornell University another. Arriving, she does what other homeless people do if they even have a car: live in it. In her case, at a deserted campground until the creepy owner closes it down for the winter.

Waitressing is a transferable skill allowing April to quickly find a job, especially in a college town with a lively coffee shop scene. At Café Decadence, yes there’s hippies but also “grungy” and “straight-laced” types. Her funky boss with “extra spiky” hair, Carly, gives her a live-saving chance, earning it by coming to the rescue of a cute yet bumbling artist cook. On one of the lines that que up every morning, a twenty-seven-year-old guy, Adam, an architect and professor at Ithaca College, takes an unusual interest in her, pleasing and frightening her not trusting his motives. Until he tells her he too was once homeless and knows what it feels like not to be “noticed.” The push-and-pull tug of their relationship is a pattern seen throughout. Exceptionally kind to a girl desperately craving being touched and noticed, yet equally afraid of the danger of relaxing her guard.

April picks up a guitar again in Part II, when her music aspirations become real. Driving up and down the East Coast stopping in Florida and towns in-between, telling herself “driving will fix things. Changing directions. Gaining distance, getting to the kind of numb where miles fill in for feelings,” she finds work playing at bars mostly, hearing her “favorite sounds”: “the click of the strap buckle against the guitar, pop of the mic as I switch it on, the way the strings of the guitar vibrate ever so slightly when I rest it on my leg.” Crowds respond to the soulful songs she’s written, but to get them to first pay attention she sizes up the audience and plays songs they know, offering them and readers nostalgia. Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again seizes this stage in her life.

April’s musical path may bring some of her dreams closer, but she’s still squatting in stranger’s homes and having one-night stands, making friends and leaving them. When she lands in Asheville, North Carolina, she picks up Ithaca-like vibes so decides not to run away so fast. Here she’s tested mightily.

Will she stay or flee?

Lorraine

Young Jewish and Italian immigrant women making a difference (Garment District, NYC; 1909-1911): In her first foray into historical fiction, self-published Canadian author of twenty-two novels, Heather Wardell, has humanized early 20^th century historical events and figures, forgotten or little known. Fiery Girls is a moving feminist story of the powerless fighting the powerful, of young immigrant women who once made the majority of clothing for women in America in NYC’s garment district, explaining why the city is considered either the leader or one of the Fashion Capitals of the World. 

That glamour wasn’t the world of the early 1900s when this story kicks off. A world in which two sixteen-year-old girls arrive at Ellis Island within weeks of each other in August 1909: one painfully alone, Jewish, from Russia at a time of violent anti-Semitic pogroms – Rosie; the other, Maria, comes to America with her brother Vincente, Catholics from Italy. Both girls are expected to earn enough money to support their families. Rosie to help hers escape persecution; Maria to return home. How long will it take them making $2.00 a week?

The two girls couldn’t be more opposite: Rosie painfully self-doubting, Maria full of self-confidence; Maria the beautiful one who relishes the attention, Rosie the innocent one who shies away from it. Rosie who’ll live in a tenement house with strangers; Maria and Vinnie came with an arrangement to live with a family friend, in a house of six with no room for eight. The girls end up becoming good friends when their paths cross working at the same infamous garment factory where the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire occurred.

Warning: This disturbing five-minute video reenacts visually what the heart of the novel reenacts literally.

Maria is fiery, full of self-confidence. Fiery girls can do gutsy things, which you’ll see. (Vinnie’s role could fill an entire novel, as his laborious, dangerous work is helping to build the New York City subway system.)

When Rosie gets her first garment factory job, starvation wages and inhumane working conditions become clear. Moving from job to job, she lands at the catastrophic factory, at a time when young immigrant female workers mobilized to form the local union of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, which led to the largest strike by women in American history. Lasting three months, it was known as the Uprising of the 20,000. Their mission epitomized by the tragic fire and loss of 146 workers, mostly girls and women, that broke out on several floors of the ten-story Ashe Building, located further away from the Lower East Side near Washington Square Park. Still standing, the building’s name changed to the Brown Building, at NYU.

One of the strengths of the novel is the way the author doesn’t rush historical events, enabling us to feel as if we were there. Part I describes the immigrant arrival and settling-in process. Chaotic and traumatic scenes at Ellis Island are immersive and for Rosie’s story based on an historical figure: Cecilia Greenstone, who meets “legs shaking” Rosie on page one to interpret her Yiddish language, critical to deciding if she’ll be allowed into America. (Maria and Vinnie studied English before they came over.)

Jewish immigrants back then spoke Yiddish, so the prose is sprinkled with the language Jewish ancestors spoke. Words nostalgic to Jews remembering their grandmothers and grandfathers, likely to have also lived in the teeming Lower East Side in ghetto-like neighborhoods, perhaps believing America’s streets were “gold-paved.” Since one of the few trades European and Eastern European Jews had been permitted to do was sewing and tailoring, many garment sweatshops were located around their deplorable, cramped housing. Primed for a crush of skilled workers who’d propel an economy integral to the city’s culture at their expense.

Besides the historical interpreter who lets Rosie into the country, the oldest grassroots organization of Jewish Women in the US becomes her savior in the form of fictional character Julia. She meets Rosie on the Island to help find her a place to live and a job. Relieved she’s a woman since “men in uniforms never care about Jews,” Rosie later tells her that “if everyone is as kind as you, America “will be a wonderful place to live.” She’s about to find out that to make that happen she’s got to fight for it. This isn’t just her coming-of-age story, it’s immigrant history. 

Fictionalized Clara, a union leader, is a charismatic force inspiring garment workers like Rosie and Maria, in different ways based on their fiery and reserved personalities. She’s based on the real Clara Lemlich who led the fight against a male-dominated industry where “a girl’s not allowed to have an opinion.”

Part II is the fire and aftermath. The fire scenes are masterly done over a number of chapters where time stands still (versus chapters alternating in the two girls’ voices and move forward in time). You can feel the sheer panic when the fire breaks out: the desperation felt when the female workers can’t get out because the doors are shut; the height of the closed windows on the floors they’re trapped in; the firefighters trying to rescue them and contain the fire. The suspense of not knowing if Rosie and Maria miraculously made it out.

Not all is gloom and doom. There’s nickelodeon entertainment and Steeplechase Park on Coney Island. Die-hard New Yorkers and visitors to the Lower East Side’s Tenement Museum will find their mouths watering at the mention of Yonah Shimmel’s Knish Bakery and Katz’s delicatessen that still endure, though little else does due to gentrification. Lost is the bustling, bursting atmosphere and spirit galvanized by communal hope and hard-living.

A word about the word shirtwaist, a term once used in the garment industry. It refers to a woman’s button-down blouse. Internet references compare it to a man’s dress shirt as it’s long-sleeved and can be white, but you can find plenty of fancier versions with puffy sleeves and feminine fabrics. Women were paid based on what piece of the shirtwaist they could sew, be it sleeves, “side seams and hems and buttonholes,” or “buttons and cuffs and lace or embroidery.” Pieces were paid based on difficulty; the more difficult and diverse, the more you were paid. Still, you might only advance to earning $5.00 or $6.00 a week, maybe $10 if you could excel at making the complete garment.

Midway through you may get frustrated with Rosie’s naivety, low self-esteem, and pinning her hopes on a “fella” she thinks is waiting for her back home. We must remember she’s only sixteen. Maria has a fella from back home on her mind too, but she doesn’t constantly question herself (far from it.) Be patient as the fire will soon consume you, as it does these two girls, co-workers and friends, making you realize Wardell intentionally showed us Rosie Before to appreciate her After.

The novel reminds us that while we wish history didn’t repeat itself, the 2000s story of the LA garment industry involving Asian and Hispanic immigrants tells us otherwise.

For countries around the globe who provide cheap labor for American goods, a recent fire at a Bangladesh garment factory is a gruesome reminder of the importance of fiery girls.

Lorraine

What makes a great artist? (Normandy, France; 2018 to present-day): “The source of art is love. I love life,” says eighty-three-year-old British artist David Hockney, “considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20^th century,” who’s once again jointly written a gorgeous book with long-time collaborator and close friend, Martin Gayford, British art critic and author of art books.

A profoundly pleasurable book – visually, literary, stylistically – it captures a new phase of the artist’s evolution, sparked in 2018 when he acquired a 17^th century farmhouse in Normandy, France. With its “higgledy-piggledy” architectural lines, La Grande Couer (“the big yard”) encompasses four acres of paradisiacal property, with flowering fruit trees and a garden, embracing the artist’s fascination with lines, angles, space, “surface and depths,” and all things nature.

“We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside of it,” says the prolific artist thriving in creative solitude during the pandemic. Hockney loves his new, charmed piece of the world nurturing “apple, pear, and cherry blossoms, plus the blackthorn and hawthorn” so much he began painting it when he arrived in the spring of 2019, in a series of panoramic drawings inspired by the remarkably preserved Bayeux tapestry displayed at the Bayeux Tapestry Museum near his home.

In over 100 works created in Normandy, he demonstrates his ability to express beauty in the ordinary things we take for granted, using saturated colors, “sumptuous blacks and subtler greens.” The paintings are marvelously life-affirming.

Watch this three-minute video to hear and see how the artist “notices” spring. You’ll feel the same uplifting spirit infused in the book:

Note: from here on in the artist will be referred to as DH, the art critic as MG, as that’s how they’re both referred to in this seamless, back-and-forth conversational style book. A hybrid of genres: part memoir, biography, art book, art history, epistolary, and dialogue between two male friends who’ve known each for “a quarter of a century.”

DH’s California swimming pool paintings of the ‘60s brought him fame. (Landscapes inspire him, having lived and painted in Hollywood Hills, Malibu by the sea, London, and England’s northern coast, Paris). He continued to paint different versions and perspectives of pools through the ‘70s and early ‘80s (one sold a few years ago for $90 million). He came on the art scene when pop artist Andy Warhol did, but wants us to know he’s not a pop artist. Instead, he describes his enduring fascination with water – be it pools, oceans, puddles, rain drops. He continues to present different versions and perspectives, this time of his bucolic landscape in northern France.

Join this brief tour at an art gallery in Paris to see some of his new artworks:

Spring Cannot Be Cancelled opens with a letter from DH to MG on the left side of the page, exuberant about his 2018 Normandy treasure. On the right side is MG’s introduction to his long-lasting relationship with the artist:

“We live in different places – and always have done – which gives our friendship a certain rhythm. For long periods, it is conducted at a distance, by email, phone calls, an occasional parcel – and a steady stream of pictures that arrive almost daily in my inbox. Sometimes, when he is an intense phase of activity, there may be three or four images together, showing a work in various stages of completion . . . Perspective, in this sense, affects not just the pictures and how they are made – a perennial topic for David and me – but all human affairs. We see every event, person, and idea from a certain vantage point. As we move through time and space, that position alters, and consequently our angle of vision.”

DH’s Normandy represents another intense phase of activity. The biography part, MG explains, is that in order “to understand Hockney’s new life in France . . . it is useful to know what he had been doing in the years and months before his move.” Which includes other images in the book by artists who influence him, such as cubists George Braque and Picasso (his favorite; here’s one explanation why), Rembrandt, Pieter Bruegel, Van Gogh, Katsushika Hokusai (also “fascinated by water”) and Monet, who made “beautiful marks that reveal the beauty in the world, so that when you’ve seen their pictures you see more of the world around you.” DH’s marks intend to do just that.

MG seems uniquely qualified to interpret this larger-than-life artist whose new paintings are done digitally, on an iPad, using a bamboo “reed pen” and multi-colored inks, in a technique evoking pointillism. We surmised that before DH says he “consciously decided” to make his “marks” or “dots” in that “French manner.” The artist is known for using a wide variety of media, techniques, materials, offering different “possibilities,” breaking new ground. Embracing state-of-the-art technology, he inventively seizes its advantages, enabling him to send MG unfinished works several times a day, which strikes as an unusual bond of artistic trust and respect.

Do most artists hold on to their work until ready? Maybe not, but there’s no doubt DH is unlike others. He’s not sure why he’s stayed famous for sixty years, begging the question asked as to what makes an artist great?

Art is so subjective, but artists are considered great when they create work singular from others. It’s impossible, in this reviewer’s opinion, not to be swept up by DH’s eye-squinting colors – brilliant greens, blues, reds, oranges, yellows – immediately recognizing his distinct view of the world (without having a “signature style”). His shade of blue is called Hockney Blue, more vibrant than Tiffany Blue. This aqua blue/turquoise/green color is everywhere: on the front and back cover, in his landscapes, his cardigan, even a bathrobe. Known for his “mismatched,” free-spirited attire, you can see the artist using this color while dressed to coordinate, with his dog Little Ruby by his side here: https://thamesandhudson.com/spring-cannot-be-cancelled-david-hockney-in-normandy-9780500094365#gallery

Besides Ruby, the artist is not completely alone. There’s his primary assistant and partner, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima (J-P), and a high-tech whiz, Jonathan Wilkinson. So many articles about the artist flood the Internet; this one discusses both assistants, and provides images of the outside and inside of the farmhouse: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2020-12-21.

Plenty of other friends and visitors want to drop by, but these days he’s more protective of his time given his age and how much he still wants to create. A rather extraordinary work ethic: gets up early in the morning, works in his studio and outdoors for hours, then can read a book that might be 700 pages long. His scholarship also impressive.

When MG asks whether he’s an “English artist, American artist, or these days a French artist?” he answers, “I’d always say it’s wherever I happen to be.”

This Normandy collaboration takes us to where the artist is now, a place we too might want to be. It doesn’t have to be a one-time reading and visual experience. My copy sits on a living room table, because, as MG writes, art is an “aesthetic thrill” that “enriches life.”

Lorraine

A 20^th century mission of travel, love, art, and journalism inspired by a trailblazing 19^th century female journalist who broke a world record (Paris, Venice, Austria; 1937): They’ve done it again! Bestselling historical fiction authors Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb have once again collaborated on an historical novel that sweeps you away. This is the second of the duo’s combined efforts reviewed here (see https://enchantedprose.com/meet-me-in-monaco/) that reflects a synergy and brand that promises to charm.

Though not all can be charming given the novel’s 1937 timeframe when Hitler’s blitzkrieg plans were palpable, yet he hadn’t – yet – invaded the three countries the novel is set in. (Austria was the earliest occupied, in 1938.) We’re made aware of the impending peril through the journalistic lens of Maddie Sommers, a budding journalist who dresses “like a man” and is fiercely independent, contrasting with her make-no-waves, finely dressed sister Clara. Estranged for the past year since their father died, they’re brought together by their beloved, bohemian-spirited, wealthy, dying grandmother Violet, who asks them to deliver three letters – in Paris, Venice, and Vienna – to say goodbye to three people who meant the world to her, unknown to the sisters at the time.

Honoring Violet’s three wishes for three months of travel is a testament to love and family. When they arrive at each of the destinations, they can open her tender instructions that explain why each person matters so much to Violet, who writes beautiful missives about her memories, loves, and the historical context.

Clara and Maddie used to be so close. In their hearts they still are, but the journey is fraught with disagreements and rivalries.

Violet lives in a seaside estate on East Hampton’s South Fork of Long Island, New York. The richest of the richest. Expected to still be alive when Clara and Maddie return, she may take up the least number of words and chapters (written in alternating voices), yet her zest for life is ever-present and totally delightful. The sisters spent privileged childhoods here. Their mother is essentially out-of-the-picture. Violet runs this show, full of surprises.

She’s thought of everything to make her granddaughters’ journey as luxurious, inspirational, and state-of-the-art as possible. Irresistible for them, and for us. While she has three wishes for three special people in her life, her fourth is to bring Clara and Maddie back together before she departs. Transporting them and us to three great and different European cities, the novel “glistens” and “sparkles” like the sun and the landscape by the Atlantic Ocean does.

Pay attention to the historical figure mentioned on page 1 – Nellie Bly, the groundbreaking woman who had a major influence on journalism. Bly is inspiration for the novel, Violet’s ambitious mission, and Maddie’s journalistic passion. Clara’s passion is Art.

Nellie Bly’s voice and spirit are introduced in the epigraph:

“I took off my cap and wanted to yell with the crowd, not because I had gone around the world in seventy-two days, but because I was home again.”

Nellie Bly, in turn, was inspired by Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. Violet’s dear friend, she told her “we must sometimes leave the places and people we love the most so we can return to them and love them all the more.”

Violet told Clara and Maddie all about Nellie, Aunt Nellie to them. Maddie, the most affected by her daring, is constantly aware of her European surroundings, keeping up with the news and writing observations in a journal. Her goal is to become a highly respected journalist who makes a difference, like Nellie did. You’ll see how she works to pull that off, and what the consequences are for her and Clara. Whatever one sister does, the other is affected in some way. Including flirtatious dalliances and romantic notions.

The romance we know most about and first is Clara’s as she’s engaged to be married to wealthy businessman Charles Hancock. Maddie sees him as an “opportunist” and “ruthless,” a source of consternation between the two. Clara is the opposite of her sister: she has a “cautious outlook on life” whereas Maddie’s is “laissez-faire” and risk-taking. Maddie believes Clara has chosen a shallow man who doesn’t understand nor care about her heart and passion for art, but could provide a protected life, yet smothering and sacrificing her desires. What Clara believes is in doubt; her passions put to the test in a glorious city that’s inspired artists for generations. Her fiancé may not be physically present but he makes his overbearing presence known every step of the way. This is a timeless feminist novel.

Both sisters are struggling with their self-worth and aspirations. Maddie had some indication she could be a fine journalist before she left; Clara too, as her art teacher Edward Arnold astonishes her with new watercolors and paintbrushes as she’s ready to set sail, giving her a boost of confidence.

Clara is the “radiant” one; Maddie the “difficult” one. Their relationship twists and turns, but it’s the three wishes and letters that drive the story. So much so you may think while reading, as I did, the book’s title is three wishes for goodbye. What are the Three Words?

To get to the first leg of their trip, we get to come on board the first Queen Mary, Cunard’s grand ocean-liner that docked in Cherbourg, Normandy during its inaugural voyage a year before Clara and Maddie sail from New York’s harbor to that French port city. An interesting piece of history we learn is the ship had a “Jewish prayer room, a stance by the shipping line against anti-Semitism.”

After arriving in France, they hopped on a train to Paris. Not the fabled one they took from Paris to Venice: the Orient Express, noted for its “artful elegance.” To arrive home, Violet booked the maiden voyage of the Hindenburg, a “hydrogen-filled airship,” also called a zeppelin since it was made by Germany’s Zeppelin Company (funded by the Nazis). We know this doomed flight was included in the sisters’ transportation itinerary on page 17, so you read this story thinking it will end in catastrophe. Does it?

One takeaway is that how you travel is part of the journey, so make it special. Which explains the arrangements Violet made for Clara and Maddie to experience Paris and environs from the skies before they left for Venice. They traveled to a Parisian suburb, Vaugirard, where a famous balloon factory was founded in the late 19^th century and sought by balloonists from around the globe, another interesting piece of history. You can already guess Clara doesn’t want to go, that Maddie does. Clara seeks out elegance and beauty, Maddie “drama and danger,” so the reader gets both.

Characterizing art “as much about what is left out as what is added,” saying “it is often what is left unsaid that conveys the clearest message” is as much a statement about art’s elusiveness as it is about defining love. Love is central to this novel, which asks “if it is really possible to fall in love with more than one person?” 

Left more unsaid than said is a message Violet learned the hard way and Clara and Maddie will confront: don’t be afraid of going after what you want. IF you can figure out what that is. Gaynor and Webb don’t make their choices easy, but sure do make their journeys entertaining.

Lorraine