“Foreign Affairs”

…. it is taken for granted that people over fifty are as set in their ways as elderly apple trees, and as permanently shaped and scarred by the years they have weathered. The literary convention is that nothing major can happen to them except through subtraction. They may be struck by lightning or pruned by the hand of man; they may grow weak or hollow; their sparse fruit may become misshapen, spotted, or sourly crabbed. They may endure these changes nobly or meanly. But, they cannot, even under the best of conditions, put out new growth or burst into lush and unexpected bloom.      

These are the thoughts of Virginia (“Vinny”) Minor, 54-year old “spinster professor” – an authority on children’s literature – in the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Foreign Affairs written by Alison Lurie, an American novelist and tenured professor at Cornell University in upstate New York.   Written in 1984, the story is as timeless today as when the book was written because the novel is focused on relationships and not events.

Foreign Affairs is really the story of two people:  Vinny Minor, a tenured professor from fictional Corinth University who is taking a sabbatical in London; and Fred Turner, a young, chiseled academic who has come to London to do literary research. Vinny is short, plain, and content in her skin as a bookish librarian introvert and yet she falls into self-pity from time to time in the form of her imaginary dog, Fido who is always in her peripheral universe.”She is not particularly generous, brave, or affectionate; she steals roses from other people’s gardens and enjoys imagining nasty deaths for her enemies.”

Vinny knows the world is a place for the beautiful and yet this hasn’t stopped her from finding companionship and sex . But as Vinny ages, she misses the

affectionate and romantic side of life…insofar as she has known it:  the leisurely walks in the woods, the exchange of notes, the rapid concealed half-caress at the crowded party, the glance across the lounge at the faculty club, the sense of sharing a complex, secret life. But she is used to missing all this – she has been short of it almost all her life.

On the plane, Vinny meets Chuck Mumpson, a middle-aged man from Oklahoma who is on his way to England with a tour group. Mumpson is everything Vinny isn’t looking for in a man and yet they find their paths crossing and are slowly drawn to each other. It is through this relationship that Vinny realizes

however peripheral we may be in the lives of others, each of us is always a central point round which the entire world whirls in radiating perspective. And this world,….is not English literature. It is full of people over fifty who will be around and in fairly good shape for the next quarter-century; plenty of time for adventure and change, even for heroism and transformation.

Meanwhile, 28-year old Fred Turner is newly separated from his wife, broke, and alone in London destined to do literary research. Miserable and disengaged from life in the grey and rainy capital, Fred attends a small party at Vinny’s flat where he meets Lady Rosemary Radley, a beautiful actress and the star of a popular television series. The story of two beautiful people who fall into a relationship and who feel entitled, Fred and Rosemary define what Vinny calls the  “Platonic Fallacy” – when people gifted with good looks “arouse false expectations: the noble exterior is assumed to clothe a mind and soul equally great.”

Foreign Affairs is a 280-page book in which the 12 chapters alternate between Vinny and Fred and the intertwining parts of their lives. Both characters are academics taking a sabbatical in London looking for a deeper meaning of who they are despite the differing opinions they share of their adopted city; Vinny who loves the city and Fred who loathes it.  Both characters are alone and chose to enter relationships with different and yet very similar people. Vinny is by her own admission not very attractive, bookish, judgmental, and open to possibilities although unchartered waters frighten her. Chuck, an unsophisticated “unhappy jobless ex-delinquent from rural Oklahoma” does not possess boyish good looks or even passable table manners, but he is open to the possibilities of what books and love offer.

Fred, an intelligent academic and handsome man is regarded as a “comer” – someone who is destined to succeed and is used to men and women falling all over him.  He goes through life feeling entitled ” to take – and to leave – whatever he chooses when he chooses.”  Rosemary, a narcissistic and self-centered actress uses her beauty and acting skills to get what she wants and feels entitled to the rich rewards of life. Both Fred and Rosemary are members of the select group of the “beautiful people” worthy of each other and the harsh judgment of others.

A story that draws parallel lines with Alison Lurie’s life, Foreign Affairs is a well written somewhat comical look at complicated characters, the struggles they endure and the realization that we don’t always know what we have until we no longer have it.