Inside the creative genius of a kinetic sculpture artist who lived life to the fullest (Indiana and other Midwestern states, New York, California, Scotland, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands; 1913-2002): How can an artist live nearly a century and leave his public mark throughout the US and Europe and no one has written about his life?

“Behind every public sculpture is a story the public never hears” says Belinda Rathbone opening her outstanding book about an American artist whose work can be seen everywhere if you know where to look. George Rickey evolved from a painter who loved history to become the most prominent moving sculpture artist outside of Alexander Calder. Initially inspired by Calder’s famous mobiles, he pioneered a technically more complicated “movement movement.”

“His sculpture, always an expression of balance and tension, uneven structures and counterweights at play with one another, also expressed, though he never said so, the dual forces of his personality and personal relationships in abstract form.”

To compare the work of two kinetic sculpture artists, here’s two looks at Alexander Calder’s crayon-colored mobiles hanging in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC:

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Then watch the sophisticated engineering in the movements of George Rickey’s stainless steel sculptures in these two short videos:

You can see four of Rickey’s outdoor sculptures (left-to-right) in Indiana, New York, California, and Germany, including a painted one (photos by Wikimedia Commons user IH Havens [CC BY-SA 4.0], Flick user Sébastien Barré [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0], Flickr user rocor [CC BY-NC 2.0], Wikimedia Commons user Rufus46 [CC BY-SA 3.0]):

George Rickey: A Life in Balance is the first biography of his fascinating creations and life, from his early childhood to the end at ninety-five. What stands out above all is how he used his technical, mechanical know-how, great intellect and knowledge, and a slew of personal connections to keep pushing himself to new frontiers, becoming a prolific moving sculpture artist (3,000 pieces). To understand his groundings and influences, Belinda Rathbone offers a take-a-village perspective.

This is not Rathbone’s only biography of an artist, nor the first time she’s been the first to write one about an artist: on the Depression-era photographer in Walker Evans. She’s also the author of another biography about her father (when he was the head of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) and the controversy surrounding a famous painting: The Boston Raphael: A Mysterious Painting, an Embattled Museum in an Era of Change, & A Daughter’s Search for the Truth.

On first impression, the art historian’s newest biography is handsome: dust jacket, page design with a ball hanging down to organize its thirty-five chapters, and nearly thirty illustrations in black-and-white and color. Along with its captivating literary and accessible scholarly prose, it’s the right impression as everything about this book is high quality.

Which explains why a blog that has never reviewed a biography wanted to share this book with you. If you’re of a mindset (like I typically am) that biographies are dry (whereas memoirs aren’t), you’ll be captivated by Rathbone’s exceptional prose and impeccable research. It was on display in her memoir The Guynd: Love & Other Repairs in Rural Scotland (see https://enchantedprose.com/the-guynd-love-other-repairs-in-rural-scotland), the impetus for appreciating the author and ignoring the genre, knowing it would read like historical art fiction and memoir. It’s even better, providing insight into how a great artist became a real one.

Starting with Rickey’s childhood, when he lived in Indiana until he was five. His family (the only boy among five sisters) moved to Glasgow, Scotland so his MIT engineer father could manage the huge Singer Sewing Machine Factory in Clydebank nearby, not like the smaller plant he oversaw in South Bend. Before they left, Rickey spent time with his grandfather, a clockmaker, a formative experience that gave him an “appreciation for mechanical structures and the intricate handwork” and the concept of a pendulum, which played out years later in the precision and intricacy of his moving sculptures. Rickey gained a different kind of appreciation for how things work and the skills needed when he observed the making of the world’s most popular sewing machine. Sent to boarding schools as a teenager, first in Scotland where he met his life-long mentor, George Lyward, who inspired him to do the same when he returned to the Midwest and taught history and studio art at colleges. Lyward understood that Rickey was no longer as passionate about math and science as history; he transferred to one of Oxford’s colleges (Balliol built in the 1200s), where as luck would have it he stumbled on the Ruskin School for Drawing. John Ruskin, 19^th century British writer/painter/more, is just one of the names cited in this book dense with so many who in some way influenced George Rickey.

Special people and fortunate events in Rickey’s life by eighteen show a pattern that continued for much of his life, opening a door that led to another, another and another, until he became the one sought after by museums and art galleries in the US and Europe. Eventually, he reached the point that he had to hire assistants or he couldn’t possibly keep up, despite his boundless energy, work ethic, and desire for simplicity. The studio where most of this happened started out as a barn on acreage in East Chatham, New York, with a dilapidated countryside farmhouse he bought with his first wife, Susan. As the money came in, the house and studio were renovated repeatedly to make room for his expanding collection; when still there wasn’t enough space he acquired other properties. His second wife, Edie, managed them. More about her below.

So many people, known and unknown to us, made a difference in Rickey’s artistic and personal life. Amazingly so. A legendary name, Andrew Carnegie, gave him his real start as the recipient of the first Carnegie grant for an artist-in-residence program at colleges, pioneering this type of grant and program. Initially, Rickey taught history and art, then combined the two teaching art history. As jobs, responsibilities, and his reputation grew, he’s seen hopping around the country taking on bigger and more challenging positions. Then in the late 1920s he spent time in Paris, that famous era of the Lost Generation. Those years and later when he lived in New York City with Susan, he felt freer to experiment with abstract art. After the Depression, he pushed himself more and never stopped. His is a stunning story of an artist constantly moving and changing in sync with historical times when art was changing too. It wasn’t until after the Vietnam War and dream-destroying political assassinations that he turns to Europe, especially in West Berlin and Rotterdam, becoming hugely popular internationally in the 1970s.

As a story of two marriages, his life becomes more relatable and not all highs. Mild-mannered and steady, Rickey’s unstable wife Susan became an obstacle to his work and peace of mind, but it wasn’t easy to divorce her. His second marriage to Edie, much younger and taller, represented decades of highs until alcoholism took its toll. For much of the book though she’s his “flamboyant,” “theatrical” opposite partner devoted to promoting his work and managing it like a “boardroom” meeting, she the Chairman. As a father, he comes across as not having enough quality time with his two sons, Philip and Stuart. Yet his influence on them is seen by their both becoming artists and Philip heading up the Foundation that carries on his father’s legacy.

The Edie years when she was at the center of Rickey’s art make this both an engrossing story of a great artist and a “couple’s life in art.”

Lorraine

How personal and world history made the man – the life of Thomas Mann (1891 to 1950; Germany, Switzerland, US): I love the sound of Colm Tóibín’s prose. It makes this ambitious biographical novel about a major literary figure of the first half of the 20^th century even more special.

Tóibín’s character study takes in the full measure of an extremely complex man considered one of the greatest German writers, and yet he was hardly known. Thomas Mann’s classical novels drew from his extremely complicated family relationships and hidden gay sexuality, so to understand the man you need to understand the autobiographical aspects of his life that inspired his works.

From the opening line, you’ll feel like settling into the novel’s 500 pages: “His mother waited upstairs while the servants took coats and scarves and hats from the guests.” The prose is dignified like Thomas Mann was.

In 2004, Tóibín, an English professor at Columbia University, wrote his first biographical novel about another literary master – Henry James, his “favorite novelist”. The Master is a fitting title for the writer considered one of the greatest novelists of all time. Tóibín could just as easily titled this novel the same. Naming it The Magician, which comes from a piece of Mann’s family life, implies an exceedingly more playful man than he was. Serious, somber, and deeply reflective, Tóibín’s clear and insightful prose not only illuminates the man, but how history made him into the man he became. History takes on new meaning through the lens of how it affected him.

At an early age, Thomas Mann knew he wanted to be a writer. At 25, in 1901, his first novel Buddenbrooks was published, which, in 1929, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature mostly for. It, like others, was inspired by something in his life. Tóibín brilliantly tracks his life alongside the book Mann was writing at the time, so we see where the writer’s inspiration came from.

For example, Julia Mann, Thomas’ mother and the setting of Lübeck in northern Germany where he grew up, with its “atmosphere of mercantile confidence,” inspired Buddenbrooks. The Magic Mountain (1924) was inspired by his wife Katia’s treatment at a sanitorium in Switzerland; and Death in Venice (1912) was drawn from a trip Thomas and Katia took to Italy, where his “left-wing,” “internationalist” older brother Heinrich, also a writer, was living. Venetian waters and the gracefulness of a little boy mesmerized Thomas in this novel about a writer who had “no defenses against the vision of overpowering beauty.”

Just as Henry James hid his sexual preferences to protect his literary reputation, Mann did too. Three of his six children were openly gay and lesbian: Erika, Klaus, and Golo. So is the Irish author. Erika and Klaus’s relationship suggests incestuous feelings, as does Thomas’ for Klaus, and Katia for her twin brother, also named Klaus. One of the complexities explored, then, is the “sly persistence of the erotic.”

Thomas’ mother is an exotic character. Brazilian-born, Julia Mann was “dreamy,” artsy, bohemian, the complete opposite of his serious father. A Senator with a “century of civic excellence” and a prosperous grain merchant, Julia’s elegance did match his “sense of style.” After he died, Julia moved the family to southern Germany, to Munich, a livelier place that suited her better. Rather likeable, she “treated the most ordinary people as though they belonged to some exotic world.”

Katia was well-aware of where Thomas’ eyes roamed, yet let him be himself around her since he suppressed his desires. She, like Julia, had a “mystique of excellence” deserving of a full length book. Thomas eyed her in an opera box, as she reminded him of his mother’s good looks. Her father was a mathematician, a “fanatical Wagnerian” and friends with the composer Gustave Mahler; her parents cultivated a love of music, art, and literature, as did Thomas’. Their youngest child Michael became a composer and later a writer. (Three of their other children were writers too.)

Katia’s family was Jewish, the Manns’ were not. They didn’t practice their religion, so Katia’s Jewishness is presented in that light. Erika and Klaus were the most outspoken about Fascism, along with Heinrich who had a great distaste for “German manners” and desire for “dominance.” In a standout scene in Venice, Heinrich expresses these sentiments about Germany while Thomas argued (they didn’t get along at all) that Venice was “all surface ease . . . there is no depth, no tradition of serious thought, no homage to darkness.” He felt people “hate Germany because it means something,” that life must be viewed in “all its complexity.” Tóibín doesn’t shy away from all the complexities.

It’s Mann’s complete turnaround about Germany’s place in the world that Tóibín brilliantly shows us. In doing so, we also see what happens to a country that lost a war and was suffering, ripe for someone to come along telling grotesque lies destroying everything that came in the way.

Thomas is first seen as soulfully passionate about German exceptionalism. Eventually he can’t ignore Hitler’s evil, gradually speaking out when his family frees itself from Germany; when they immigrate to America he’s the most outspoken. Preferring the quietude of his study, Mann’s about-face as a political figure is spectacular.

Mann’s life also shows that you didn’t have to be Jewish to become an enemy of Nazi Germany:

“The very culture he had represented since the war – bourgeois, cosmopolitan, balanced, unpassionate – was the very one that they [Nazis] were most determined to destroy.”

The richness of Tóibín’s prose and imagination was inspired by access to Mann’s diaries from 1918 to 1921 and 1933 to 1950. The rest were destroyed, so the author fills in missing years using a long list of other resources he acknowledges – but all is penned through the magic of his prose.

When Mann received the Nobel Prize, 6 ½ million Germans voted for Hitler. Five years earlier, only a fringe element (3%) did. Mann went from “complacency to shock.” You’ll then first find the family in Lugano, Switzerland and southern France, until they fully appreciate that Thomas was “one of the most powerful Germans alive” and America is their safest option.

A vivid scene takes place at a 6,000 person event held on Harvard’s campus when Mann and Albert Einstein were invited speakers; both men arrived at Princeton University’s Institute of Advanced Study around the same time. Einstein, who by then had discovered his theory of relativity, remarked to Mann about how more roaring the crowd was for the writer over the scientist: “That is as it should be . . . If it were otherwise, there would be chaos.” Mann wasn’t sure what he meant, but it seems he was saying the writer organizes the world, the scientist confuses it. 

In America, Mann also gets the attention of a woman who’s a force to be reckoned with: Agnes Meyer married to the owner of the Washington Post. She connects Mann to FDR; the two saw him as politically valuable for encouraging Americans to get into WWII. Despite disbelieving what they believed, that he was “a man of principle” and “clarity,” Mann picks up the mantel. 

The message is clear: America needs more people of principle to protect our fragile democracy. Listen to the writer.

Lorraine

Seeking therapy for a hurting world (Madison, Wisconsin; set over one year before the 2021 Presidential election, light years on other planets): Like a space rocket, Bewilderment soars and plunges.

Orbiting between a world that sees only black or white to one bursting in color, at a critical time when our children and planet Earth are in crisis, when political millions distrust science, and space travel is no longer the exclusive right of NASA, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Overstory Richard Powers has written an achingly beautiful novel in a poet’s voice.

Among the many questions asked, one that moves us like never before is: “Wouldn’t you like to see an epidemic of infectious well-being?”

After feeling so “exhausted” from writing The Overstory, Powers – he read 1,200 books to write it – he wasn’t sure he’d write anymore. Thankfully, Powers has carried trees into his impassioned thirteenth novel, along with his knowledge of threatened and endangered species, emerging approaches in brain therapy, astronomy and the stuff of science-fiction.

The novel is a literary “empathy machine” similar to the experimental therapy he describes in the super-advanced MRI/AI brain machinery – Decoded Neurofeedback – depicted in the novel. His purpose is a call-to-arms for thinking creatively and innovatively on reconnecting our increasingly socially and emotionally broken youth who, ironically, are the ones who’ve become world advocates for urgently caring for the environment. If you’re thinking of Greta Thunberg, she does make an appearance in fictionalized Inga Alder.

Bewilderment centers on a nuclear family of three, all in different ways are environmental advocates. The child – who says the least (highlighted in italics) but affects us the most – is Robin. His father Theo describes him as “my sad, singular, newly turning nine-year-old, in trouble with this world”; the novel ends when Robbie is ten.

Named after his mother Aly’s “favorite bird,” an avid birdwatcher, she and Theo went birdwatching on their first date in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, where the author moved to having spent so much time researching there to write The Overstory. Father and son are both grieving Aly’s death. You may want to know how long ago she died when the story begins; when you find out on page 97 you’ll realize it doesn’t matter when it comes to grief. (How she died, you’ll learn too.) Theo didn’t just love and “admire” her, he “revered her.” Her life force lives within father and son.

Theo is an astrobiologist and professor at the University of Madison-Wisconsin studying whether there’s any evidence of life forms on other planets. He uses his vast knowledge and wild imagination about the universe to tell fantastical stories to calm Robbie down because, when we meet the third-grader, he’s having meltdowns, altercations at school and was suspended. Robbie is neurodiverse: his brain is wired differently, lacking constructive ways to self-control, while being acutely sensitive to the world around him. His mother instilled some of that in him as an animal rights lawyer and fierce activist for all living creatures. Her mantra: “MAY ALL BEINGS BE FREE FROM SUFFERING.”

The term neurodiversity first appeared on this blog in a review of A Room Called Earth. Far less stigmatizing, it refers to children (and adults) diagnosed on the “spectrum” like Robbie. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is the current diagnostic term for a number of disorders such as Asperger’s Syndrome, Autism, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Robbie has been diagnosed with all three. When his second pediatrician wants to medicate him, Theo’s response is:

“I wanted to tell the man that everyone alive on this fluke little planet was on the spectrum. That’s what a spectrum is. I wanted to tell the man that life is a spectrum disorder, where each of us vibrated at some unique frequency in the continuous rainbow. Then I wanted to punch him. I suppose there’s a name for that, too.” 

In a “Note from the Author” that appears in the advanced reader copy, Powers asks and proposes if a different kind of “emotional therapy” would make “a difference” in helping people whose brains function divergently. Decoded Neurofeedback has roots that go back at least to 2011 when researchers at Boston University and in Japan conducted sophisticated biofeedback using MRIs and AI. Theo, Robbie, and Aly earlier all consented to the tracking of their brain activities in an entertaining way at Dr. Currier’s lab, located at Theo’s university campus a few miles from their home. Robbie is deemed an excellent candidate; Theo is open-minded so he lets his son go further by using this high-tech, very expensive approach to retrain his social brain – promising, exciting, and controversial. Robbie takes to it far greater than even Theo could have imagined.

Robbie also loves to draw, giving “him a little peace.” He’s also a big reader, so the library “shelves were a total candy shop.” Early on in the novel, Theo pulls Robbie out of school, a bold decision considering how poorly he’s doing, but in light of how his teachers, administrators, classmates and their parents humiliate, bully, and punish him and grades that don’t reflect his high intelligence, we approve. Theo tells us he’s frightened of parenting Robbie not knowing what might put him over the edge, yet he’s acutely aware of how calming Nature came be for his son “attuned to life.” He takes Robbie on a one-week camping trip to the Great Smokies, with its “six different kinds of forest” – “more tree species than in all of Europe.” When Robbie declares, “I feel I belong here,” Theo knows he’s made the right choice.

Among Robbie’s “six going on sixty” comments, he says:

“The great horned owl’s conservation rating is ‘Least Concern.’ How stupid is that? Like: unless they’re all dead, we shouldn’t be concerned?”

You’ll also meet a slew of threatened or endangered species. Here’s three – the Karner blue butterfly, Dusty gopher frog, and giant anole lizard (credits: Stockvault/Pixabay [CC0], Flickr/USFWS Headquarters [CC BY 2.0], Flickr/Martin de Lusenet [CC BY 2.0]):

“While finishing my previous novel, The Overstory,” Powers wrote in his note to readers, “I kept reading accounts of the toll our growing environmental catastrophe is taking on the young. A new word, solastalgia, seemed to take hold overnight. I began to see how we are raising a generation of troubled kids born homesick for a place they never knew. And we adults are relying more and more on a single response for treating the epidemic ravaging our children’s mental health: medication.”

Theo’s first-person voice is visionary when it’s about life on other planets. If the astronomy prose goes over your head like it did mine, you’ll get a gist of it because of how it affects Robbie, a wondrous boy you’ll want to hug and cheer.

Sixteen years ago, Robert Louv called for a back-to-nature movement in his pioneering book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. It seems the Richards are onto something.

Prepare for a ride into “inner space” and outer space. Remember it comes with risks.

Lorraine

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