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May 07, 2007
The Words and Worlds of Alan Furst
I finished the last page of "The Foreign Correspondent" and realized I have read every novel by Alan Furst. I've never done that before. That says something about what I think about his novels, all set in the 1930s and 1940s in Europe. I must identify with his main characters, men, often Jewish, who get pulled in to plots and intrigues on the side of the angels. Reluctantly, they step into the mysteries and often find themselves on the run from the NKVD or Gestapo, or both.
The first novel, Night Soldiers, was ambitious and had a broader scope and time frame than the others. After that, Furst narrowed his scope and typically did variations on the same theme. Thwarted romance colors the books, as do loving descriptions of the rainy, shoulder-shrugging streets of Paris. But rest assured -- amor omnia vincit in the world of embattled romantics of Alan Furst.
He's starting a book tour in a few weeks to promote the trade paperback edition of The Foreign Correspondent, so if you like the guy, now's your chance to see him live.
Here's a snippet from The Foreign Correspondent, lightly edited for the Kesher Talk family audience:
It had been three weeks since Weisz’s return from Berlin, and he had to call Veronique—casual as the love affair had been, he couldn’t just vanish. So, on a Thursday afternoon, he telephoned and asked her to meet him after work at a café near the gallery. She knew. Somehow she knew. And, Parisian warrior that she was, had never looked so lovely. So soft—her hair soft and simple, eyes barely made up, blouse falling softly over her XXXs, with a new perfume, sweet, not sophisticated, clouds of it. Three weeks’ absence and a meeting at a café made words practically pointless, but decency demanded an explanation. “I have met, somebody,” he said. “It is, I think, serious.”
There were no tears, only that she would miss him, and he realized, just at that moment, how much he liked her, what good times they’d had together, in bed and out.
“Someone you met in Berlin, Carlo?”
“Someone I met a long time ago.”
“A second chance?”
Yes.”
“Very rare, the second chance.” You won’t get one here.
“I will miss you,” he said.
“You’re sweet, to say that.”
“It’s true, I’m not just saying it.”
A melancholy smile, a lift of the eyebrows.
“May I call you sometime, to see how you’re doing?”
She put a hand, also soft, and warm, on his, by way of telling him what a jackass he’d just been, then stood up and said, “My coat?”
Van | 05/07/07 at 07:10 AM | Categories: Sensual pleasures
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