Frances and Bernard

September 3, 2012
Frances and Bernard are writers. She’s a novelist who studied at Iowa, Catholic, a bit prim, but tart-tongued. He’s a poet, descended from Puritans but a convert to Catholicism, prone to fits of mania. They meet in the late 1950s in a writer’s colony and become friends. If this sounds like Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell, it should: Frances and Bernard are their fictionalized avatars, with Frances the more fictional, since she’s neither Southern nor suffering from an incurable disease. Short but satisfying, this epistolary novel covers roughly nine years, as Frances and Bernard grow closer, at first through letters, then visits, always fending off questions from themselves and others about whether they could be more than friends. If Bauer makes things better for O’Connor than they were in actuality, she does it without cheating on her characters, who, whatever their real life inspirations, are fictional and obligated only to work in that form. Bauer’s debut novel (after her memoir, Not That Kind of Girl) is well written, engrossing, and succeeds in making Frances and Bernard’s shared interest in religion believable and their relationship funny, sweet, and sad. A lovely surprise. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit.

July 1, 2013
Bauer's ("Not That Kind of Girl") latest imagines the relationship writers Robert Lowell and Flannery O'Connor might have had. Frances and Bernard meet one summer at a writers' colony and start an alliance of the mind, growing closer as they write letters over several years in which they discuss their writing, their faith, and the jobs each takes to provide food and shelter. Epistolary works can be difficult to imbue with emotion owing, in part, to the lack of dialog. The narrators, Angela Brazil and Stephen R. Throne, do a wonderful job; Brazil is especially skilled at conveying the emotional depth in Frances' letters. VERDICT Recommend to listeners who enjoy works of a meditative nature, or who like works such as Jonathan and Tad Richards's "Nick and Jake". ["This remarkable method of storytelling provides snapshots of the events that shape the story. This book will appeal to readers who enjoy plumbing the depths of the human condition," read the review of the Houghton Harcourt hc, "LJ" 9/1/12.--Ed.]--Suanne B. Roush, Seminole, FL Copyright 013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.