"Victoria John, a young American with Puritanism in her blood, arrives in Paris in 1933 and takes a room in a Neuilly lodging-house. Here are two Russian women, starving and shivering over the remnants of their gentility who advise her to leave and tell her of Sorrel the visionary in his steel-grey tunic. Drawn into his fantastic artists' community where she sells handwoven scarves, she witnesses the dirt and conniving behind the scenes. Victoria is looking for truth but stumbles instead into drunkenness and emotional chaos when she meets the erratic artist, Anthony Lister. First published in 1934, this autobiographical novel which lays bare one woman's path to self-discovery, is a poetic and imaginative achievement."--from the summary on Goodreads
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So much for summaries. It isn't so much the plot of this book that fascinates, though the setting and characters are interesting taken in their historical contexts (expatriate Paris), but the way the book makes you feel when you read it. This book made me miserable--but I literally could not put it down. The extreme poverty, the filthy, neglected children who have been so isolated that they don’t know how to play like proper children, the greed and self-interest of the self-declared colony (cult) leader, the constant hunger of the Russian ladies who have nothing to cling to except their tattered clothes from the previous century, the bulging white eyes of the ancient landlady who is blind but sees all, the waves of sickness that wash over the young American as she tries desperately to induce an abortion, the child conceived on a drunken, forgotten night, the very detailed descriptions of the latrine behind the shop, the greenness, the stench, the fevers, endless glasses of cloudy Pernod …this is not the picturesque side of France. Kay Boyle’s writing is like nothing else I’ve ever read. Reading My Next Bride is like reading a long, disturbing poem--"poetic and imaginative" doesn't even begin to convey the experience of reading this novel.
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| Kay Boyle by Man Ray (1930s) |
"I am ready to take each act of my life as a stone in my hands, never to be denied,and my words will be like stones to myself, hard and irrevocable."
From what I've read about Kay Boyle, this book appears to be autobiographical. The cult leader, Sorrel, is supposed to be loosely based on Raymond Duncan, brother of dancing queen and avid scarf-wearer, Isadora Duncan, with the couple Harry and Polly (aka "Caresse") Crosby making an appearance as artist Anthony Lister and his wife Fontana. FYI, check out Harry Crosby if you haven't already. Interesting fellow...
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| Isadora Duncan |
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