I haven't written here for ages but wanted to put my thoughts down on a novel I am currently re-reading. I keep certain novels and read them again at about 12-monthly intervals. I make no apologies for reading all my Jane Austen ones every Christmas. Well, to be honest, this past Christmas I didn't read Mansfield Park. It is my least favourite of her works. Reading her novels is like visiting friends but it is better to dip lightly into them when in the mood.
I am currently reading Away from Home by Rona Jaffe. It is set in Rio in 1960 and was published around then, too. I first read it when I was away from home myself - nowhere exotic, only in London, very young, very naive and trying to fit in, more or less like the characters in the novel. Rona Jaffe understood her characters and even to this day and these very different times, readers can relate to the insecurities and the need to trust partners and friends, to be true to one's self. I think that is what makes this novel so memorable. We do learn a bit about Brazil, about carnival, about the cloistered life rich Brazilian women led in those days, although that was slowly changing. Jaffe was a gifted writer (she died in 2005, I think, although I could be wrong) and her novels build into fascinating stories with very logical endings. She did not criticize the mores of her generation, she simply recorded them and let her readers do the thinking.
I know Away from Home by heart and I always feel inadequate as a writer when I read it. She brings to life the sounds and smells of Rio, the craziness of carnival in that city, the life of American expats trying to fit in, trying to make the best of their exile while their husbands worked.
I'll be sorry when I reach the final page of this novel even though I have a stack of "must-reads" which I know I'll enjoy even if they don't quite do for me what this novel does.
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