Bookend Books

I just finished reading two books that quite accidentally are perfect bookends for each other. Paul LaFarge's Luminous Airplanes is a wistful coming-of-age story. I usually avoid coming-of-age stories, I find that my own was quite enough, but this one slipped through. A young man goes to his recently deceased grandfather's home to clean it out. He begins a search for his dead father who he never met. He was raised by his mother and aunt, a fun pair of eccentric characters. He encounters a childhood friend, and begins a repeat of his father's failure. He had been a graduate student of history, always a good setup for characters looking back. History, memory, loss and finding you self.

In Lily Tuck's I Married You For Happiness a woman's husband dies unexpectedly after many years of marriage. She takes us through a stream-of-consciousness of memories as she sits through the night. Her husband was a mathematician, but not a recluse: he loved good food & wine, and sailing. There are fun math anecdotes, for example the story of "amiable numbers" and lots of travel references, especially in France. The two books make a good pairing, which I have not encountered in this way before.