Travels With My Aunt (4*)

I picked up "Travels With My Aunt" after Rupert Everett chose it as the novel he'd bring to a desert island.   He'd already demonstrated his pop culture bonafides by selecting "Being Boring" as one of his eight "Desert Island Discs" and memory recalled that the incomparable Maggie Smith had played the elderly Augusta in George Cukor's 1972 film adaptation.  

In fact, it was hard to separate the Dowager Countess of Grantham's voice from that of author Graham Greene's much earlier creation.  Smith's droll delivery is perfect for lines such as this, of which there are many:

Smuggling on such a large scale seemed more like a business coup than a crime."

More significantly, Graham Greene and I share a similar philosophy of life:  embarking on a new love affair really is like visiting a new country.  Augusta's multiple lovers include a smitten Jamaican boy toy (relatively speaking) and an Italian con artist, among other memorable if occasionally stereotypical characters.  This arch, very amusing novel charts her slow-but-sure success in broadening the horizons of Henry Pulling, her relatively young nephew who has been spending most of his time tending to his backyard dahlias. 

"I'm  not really accustomed to foreign travel.  You'd find me . . . "  

"You will take to it quickly enough in my company.  The Pullings have all been great travelers.  I think I must have caught the infection through your father."

"Surely not my father . . . He never travelled further than Central London."

"He travelled from one woman to another, Henry, all through his life.  That comes to much the same thing.  New landscapes, new customs.  The accumulation of memories.  A long life is not a question of years."

Henry turns out to be a quick study on travels that take them to Brighton, Istanbul (on the Orient Express) and Paraguay.  

One of the few marks of age which I noticed in my aunt was her readiness to abandon one anecdote while it was yet unfinished for another.  Her conversation was rather like an American magazine where you have to pursue a story, skipping from page twenty to page ninety-eight and turning over all kinds of subjects in between:  childhood, delinquency, some novel cocktail recipes, the love life of a film star, and even quite a different fiction to the one so abruptly interrupted.

Too bad Augusta never made it to the Pines.  Great choice, Rupert--you're invited to join us anytime!

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