Liars and Saints

 In Mexico, we became students of Elizabeth Taylor; she fell in love with Puerto Vallarta during or after Richard Burton's filming of "The Night of the Iguana." Taylor and Burton bought a villa, and then they bought the villa directly across the street. They constructed an overpass/bridge, modeled on the Bridge of Sighs. When Taylor grew impatient with Burton, she exiled him to the bridge; he would spend a night, or two, in the "shadow villa," before Taylor would rediscover her patience and reopen the doors to the main home.  (Burton was, apparently, a great writer; his diaries are available via Yale University Press. This book is a favorite of Dwight Garner's; Garner reviews new titles for the NY Times.) Marc and I especially admire Liz for her approach to life's Second Act. After she (inevitably) lost her Hollywood luster, she found that she was still a subject of bottomless tabloid fascination. She decided, rather than whine about this, she would find...

What books are on your nightstand? Amy Bloom's stories, "Where the God of Love Hangs Out." She is my old teacher, and I like reading things by someone I actually know; it's easier to slip into the story. I think "God of Love" is Bloom's best book, though her recycling of stories from earlier volumes is a bit shameless. I especially like the first story, "Your Borders, Your Rivers, Your Tiny Villages," which has a middle-aged couple awkwardly conducting an affair while news reports from Dubyah's war flash across a TV screen in the background. I have Philip Pullman's new book, but as much as I like Lyra, and as much as I find Mrs. Coulter's villainous brother engaging, I feel the story is self-indulgent. One damn thing after another. I'm missing a sense of momentum. And there is my husband's reading selection--Adam Rippon's memoir, "Beautiful on the Outside"--which is worthwhile for the title, at the very l...

Mrs. Palfrey first came to the Claremont Hotel on a Sunday afternoon in January. Rain had closed in over London, and her taxi sloshed along the almost deserted Cromwell Road, past one cavernous porch after another, the driver going slowly and poking his head out into the wet, for the hotel was not known to him. This discovery, that he did not know, had a little disconcerted Mrs. Palfrey, for she did not know it either, and began to wonder what she was coming to. She tried to banish terror from her heart. She was alarmed at the threat of her own depression.... This is from Elizabeth Taylor's "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont," her most famous novel, cited as one of the greatest novels of all time, in one of those silly rankings. She isn't THAT Elizabeth Taylor. She is a different person, and people say she would have won more fame if she hadn't shared her name with Martha/Brick's Wife/Cleopatra. A story is a journey--any journey--even if it's simply an ol...