LOVE FROM AFAR
At 42, New Hampshire ski salesman Frank Cadwallader has settled into an increasingly lifeless marriage. He's equally captivated by Immi, a married Finnish nurse with whom he continues to correspond after returning home.
Useful takeaways from this story.
At 42, New Hampshire ski salesman Frank Cadwallader has settled into an increasingly lifeless marriage.
He's equally captivated by Immi, a married Finnish nurse with whom he continues to correspond after returning home.
Their letters sustain a relationship as Frank changes careers and his wife, Mary, immerses herself in caring for AIDS patients.
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The useful part
At 42, New Hampshire ski salesman Frank Cadwallader has settled into an increasingly lifeless marriage. He's equally captivated by Immi, a married Finnish nurse with whom he continues to correspond after returning home. Their letters sustain a relationship as Frank changes careers and his wife, Mary, immerses herself in caring for AIDS patients.
How it works
- Von Reyn follows these relationships across decades, weaving historical events into the chronicle of the characters' changing lives.
- Some clumsy dialogue works too hard to explain epidemics, Quaker beliefs, or geopolitics, but the swiftly evolving story minimizes such shortcomings with surprising developments and sharp integrations of...
- As he and Mary enter into what Frank dubs "marital intimacy reimagined," his love for Immi endures, but old age comes for all the characters as their hope for reinvention collides with the inevitability of...
- The author conveys his characters' thoughts with precision and beauty, deftly capturing Frank's awe at Finnish summers and his obsession with the woman he can't have.
Details worth keeping
A lifelong Quaker, he joins a peace mission to the Soviet Union, but the first cracks in his familiar world appear before he leaves—Russian lessons lead to an obsession with his alluring teacher, Olga, whose own titillating secrets prove nearly as surprising as Frank's attraction to her.
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