Boston Adventure

I have to confess that Stafford was a writer who I only knew of because of her famously stormy relationship with Robert Lowell. When I saw one of her books available second-hand, I was delighted to finally have the chance to read some of her work. Boston Adventure is the story of Sonie Marburg, a young girl who grows up on the seaside longing for the calm and cool lights of Boston. Where most young girls want love and adventure, Sonie only wants to be a prim old maid just like her idol, Miss Pride of Boston. Miss Pride is a regular summer guest at the hotel where Sonie's mother works, and Sonie longs to belong to her, go home with her, be part of her family. Her own family is not what it should be. Her mother is a mad Russian who lives in a constant state of resentment against men and her life in America. Her father is a German cobbler, weak and eventually ultimately absent. Nothing about her own life, her parents' passion and beauty, appeals to her. Eventually Sonie gets what she wants (or thinks that she wants). She goes to Boston with Miss Pride as her Ward and companion. As you expect, what she finds there is not exactly as she imagined. The major themes in the story: class and identity, the American notion that talent/intelligence can lift you above your born station, immigration, madness, the different kinds of desire. If there's a one sentence point that I could distill, it would be something like a meditation on how every choice has a price. I am really interested, now, to read the short stories by Stafford. I really loved this book, but it wasn't perfect. There's something a little bit odd about the pacing-- particularly in the Boston section. It is almost as though having gotten Sonie to Boston, Stafford had a difficult time with her life there. As a reader, there was a long dangerous becalmed section that was very nearly frustrating. I've seen this kind of pacing issue before in the novels of short story writers, and it makes me rather more anxious to read her short work. She's a very good writer. I really loved her long looping sentences and the strong visual nature of her descriptions. Really delicious prose. This was an emotionally difficult book in some ways for me. I wasn't escaping from the same kind of madness as Sonie, for sure, but I experienced my life and my decision to go to Bryn Mawr as a very similar kind of conscious escape. I wanted to find the cool and gracious people of the world. The folks who didn't have rotting bathrooms or cousins with ten children. It's sort of usual to say that you discover that those people don't exist, but as Sonie finds out-- that isn't true. It's more complicated than that. They *do* exist and you *can* live like that-- sort of. But there's a price for everything, sometimes too high of a price. I wish that I could have read the invisible other book-- what happened to Sonie once she finally outgrows Miss Price. If she does. Anyhow, I would recommend the book. The introduction by Ani