Book Review: "Nowhere City" by Alison Lurie

Books about failed marriages, broken relationships and movement which is neither looked forward to nor wanted is a big thing for the modernist, realist and post-modernist eras. Authors such as Richard Yates and his moving “Revolutionary Road”, “Eleven Kinds of Loneliness” and “A Good School” which all demonstrate different types of failed relationships between lovers, friends and acquaintances have been part of one of the biggest movements in the literary emotions of humans. Authors such as Christopher Isherwood have taken this one step further with both familial relationships and those with homosexual undertones at a time when the LGBTQ+ movement was still fighting for their human rights. Novels such as “Brideshead Revisited” all the way through to “Cloud Atlas” have explored the extremities of human emotion from love, to strength to suicide and back again. In the work of Alison Lurie though, I find that these relationships have a tendency to be slightly unrealistic in their sense of endurance. It is almost a romanticised emotional abuse that is more befitted to a mid-career Lana Del Rey song than a realist novel. Ever since I read her novel “The Last Resort” I can honestly say that I have felt this way more than once. Though she is a brilliant writer, sometimes her relationship writing can get carried away with any amount that a person can endure from another person. Not just making it unrealistic, but making the abuse of the mind a romanticised aspect that I certainly do not agree with.

Paul and Katherine have just moved to Los Angeles, California and Paul is all into soaking up the sunshine, taking in the splendour and making the most of the movement to one of the world’s most famous cities. Katherine on the other hand, is depressed. It looks like she never wanted to be there in the first place and, after befriending a therapist, she seems to become more and more upset as the first section moves on. The one thing I have to say about this novel is that I do not understand how Paul seems to not notice that Katherine is depressed - or that he does not want to. He is married to this woman and it would seem a bit shitty of him to not notice that she does not want to be in California and is not just feeling homesick. However, the same can be said for Katherine. She seems to take no notice of her husband’s happiness and just goes off with new friends and tries not to kill herself. There is a lack of communication between them that seems completely unrealistic for a married couple that are moving somewhere together.

However, the book itself is very well written in terms of description. There is one description that I absolutely adored in the second part of the novel. The description is about the way Glory looks and her ‘tight pink pants’ with her ‘heavy eyeshadow’ and large glasses. It is a brilliant description because it not only gives us an appearance of her, but it gives us an appearance of her at that particular moment in what she is trying to emulate. It seems like everyone in California in this novel is trying to pretend to be something that they are not and so, shows the fakery that is so heavily associated with the state - especially when it comes to Los Angeles. There are representations of this everywhere even in the whole “Kay” drama that comes towards the end. It is a brilliant novel of symbolism even though I personally do not think that the relationships are written very well.