ON READING JUSTINE LEVY, part 2; or HOW TO MAKE WINE FROM SOUR GRAPES, maybe

this post was planned, in the sense that i had planned to read nothing serious the day after i read the rendezvous; but i had also planned, after reading levy's debut, to unequivocally like her second translated work, which i say only because i hadn't planned to review nothing serious simply on the basis of contrast or of being basely contrary. things sometimes don't go according to plan. there. exonerated.

nothing serious, like the rendezvous, was a sensation. it even managed to knock the di vinci code from european bestseller lists. unfortunately, that was likely more for its media palatability than purely for its literary merit. nothing serious is, again like the rendezvous, strongly autobiographical. louise does end up with adrien, and nothing serious narrates louise's life after adrien has left her. left her for paula, his stepmother and a thinly veiled mask for carla bruni, the actress/model for whom justine levy's husband did in fact leave her (and who later married french president nicolas sarkozy). and that sells books.

nothing serious is styled very much in the frenzied, infrequently punctuated, out-of-time manner of levy's first novel. but despite the virtuosity of her prose (which is, granted, reason enough to give levy's work a read), surely levy the editor ("there's too much published everyone's saying so," she/louise says herself) can't expect her readers to be won by just clever words. and neither should her readers let nothing serious make its case as a novel on dazzling writing alone.

but louise's second story starts like a pretty commonplace narrative of contemporary anxiety. it goes on like that too. and it's all the more self-indulgent for knowing that louise and levy aren't separated by a very wide stretch. the same poetry that breathed magic into louise in the rendezvous does little for her as an "ex-woman." she "want[s] to be alone, to wait for nothing, hope for nothing." maybe, sure, the distinction is only one of taste in plot. but i adore crazy women. and where's the novel in what we can't assume isn't just creative recounting of facts? memoirs of addiction and depression (and addiction and depression) weren't at all uncommon in the last decade. sally brampton for example, also an editor (and the founder of elle, in fact, a favorite of louise's), didn't seem to want to masquerade her story as a fiction. (i didn't finish it, actually, but then again.)

a shame, i thought, because i've loved every other work in translation i've read from melville house. then, i thought, not so much (a shame, that is). although louise's story doesn't exactly turn around, it does -- after the drugs and most of the depression -- grow into itself. . . . though now i can't find a single passage at any of the page numbers i noted to justify that. as much as i'd like to see it redeemed, nothing serious was just that. that's the point, i guess. but my sense of disappointment is renewed as i realize that i noted more pages the more time i spent at the bar. though i absolutely loved that levy referenced coin locker babies in her last chapter.

so it comes down to little bits of sympathy, then, with another heavy dose of resignation. louise has to grow up. adrien's gone, but now there's pablo. there were amphetamines and xanax in between. and an abortion. and crying. it's my mood, and the rain maybe, that keeps me from liking nothing serious more. ironic, because it ends by spelling out the sentiment that so charmed me in the rendezvous:

"life is a rough draft, in the end. every story is the rough draft of the next one, you cross out, you cross out, and when it's almost right and without any misprints, it's over, all that's left is to leave."

so, ms. levy, don't leave yet.

begrudgingly, i'll take that as advice as well.