The Scenic Route

Starred review from March 16, 2009
It takes skill and assurance to pull off this beguiling narrative-by-digression, a love story–cum–family history–cum–confession of sins, and Kirshenbaum (An Almost Perfect Moment
) has both in plentiful supply. A romantic affair begins in Fiesole when narrator Sylvia Landsman, an out-of-work, 42-year-old New York divorcée, meets debonair Henry Stafford, a Southern-born expatriate with expensive tastes and a good nose for wine. At the outset, Henry reveals that he is married to a rich woman who permits his lavish expenditures, and yet Sylvia—cynical, wry and imbued with Jewish guilt—dares to hope that Henry will be the man who changes her life. While the lovers enact a contemporary Two for the Road
in his green Peugeot, Sylvia entertains Henry with stories about her eccentric family, meanwhile disclosing her own foibles and hang-ups—including some portents about betraying her best friend, Ruby. Sylvia segues from comedic quips to sad aperçus, and from cultural markers to historical vignettes, finally confessing the sin of omission that ended her friendship with Ruby. What's crushing isn't Sylvia's secret—it's how knowledge hasn't made her wiser. There are no happy endings here; instead, Kirshenbaum delivers capital-T truths.