From the much-praised Scottish author Galloway (The Trick Is to
Keep Breathing, 1994, etc.), an intermittently amusing
warts-and-all story of two unmarried Scotswomen on a dreary French
holiday, told in brittle flakes of self-consciously modern writing.
Rona and Cassie are both in their 30s. Rona can drive the rattling
automobile, Cassie can't; Rona smilingly finds a solution to
various problems, Cassie sulkily thinks negative-but-true thoughts:
"...they would drink the coffee in silence, warding off the
impending tip question...Foreign countries jesus. An interminable
two weeks of this to come." As the two zig and zag through a
bleakly downcast vision of roadside attractions and detours, Cassie
relives her past with old boyfriends in accounts - starting back
when Cassie was a lower-class tourist awed by the London Tube and
ending on nudist beaches in Albania - that are delightfully awful:
"Tom. Happy as a pig in shit. Rows of compact arses turning their
cheeks up to the sun in the guinness-coloured ovals of his shades."
The novel finds a vein of life in these scenes more dense and
powerful than in most of Rona's and Cassie's present-time
misadventures, even adding in Galloway's didactic lectures about
men, life, and the futility of escape through love or tourism: or
after sitting through an homage to Molly Bloom's Ulysses monologue
- in which Cassie expresses both her longing for men and her
disgust of them - by which time one will be drumming one's
fingertips in impatience. Well-observed scenes of quotidian France
and hilariously downbeat details of modern love can't overcome the
book's end-reliance on a sentimental, simplistic teaser - will
Cassie and Rona become a romantic couple? - and leaving the
question of love for the next holiday trip only further postpones
the drama in this one. A Thelma and Louise without the guns, the
adventure, or even the convertible. (Kirkus Reviews)
Cassie and Rona. Rona and Cassie. Two women on a driving holiday in Northern France. A caustic, coruscating and deeply funny account of morality, dysfunctional relationships and women abroad, FOREIGN PARTS is that rare hybrid:a strikingly original novel about real life, told with accuracy, compassion and a truly saturnine delight.
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