I mentioned in passing the other day that Diane Meier's The Season of Second Chances
was a treat of a book, and I'm saying it again now that I've reflected on it, and with even greater conviction! It's one of those novels in which you want to live for a while - getting to know the people, exploring the place, and delighting in what you find with almost every encounter. Beautifully, intelligently written, full of insight into human nature and dressed in sophisticated style, it is an interesting and inviting book in which to spend time.
Dr. Joy Harkness leaves New York and Columbia University to take up a post in a ground-breaking educational program at Amherst College. Under the clear-sighted leadership of Bernadette Lowell, "a kind of Julia Child of academia", the team will teach the liberal arts in a cross-disciplinary context. As Joy settles into her new department, warmly welcomed by colleagues, she discovers a small-town closeness she never experienced in the big city, but having habitually kept most people at arm's length, this takes some getting used to.
While work absorbs Joy, so too does her new house, a large Victorian villa which she is renovating with the help of local builder, Teddy Hennessy. As Teddy's skill and eye for detail transform the ramshackle old place into a welcoming, comforting home, so Joy's life opens up to new relationships and in "a world outside of ideas, of letters and literature", she discovers things she thought had passed her by.
I'll give you no more of the plot than that, but I will tell you what 'furnishes' the novel: books do, literary references abound, food does, clothes too - though there's a telling twist to that strand - and interiors and objects form an exquisite backdrop to every scene. The whole is warm and elegant, fluent and absorbing; a grown-up coming-of-age story, but a witty and unpredictable one. This is Diane Meier's first novel - and a most assured one at that; I hope her next book is well on its way as the fans she will have acquired with her debut will be eagerly awaiting it.
