Claire Marvel: A Novel - Hardcover

Schwartz, John Burnham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 038550344X ISBN 13: 9780385503440

Publisher: Nan A. Talese, 2002

Synopsis

With the publication of his second novel, Reservation Road, John Burnham Schwartz established himself as a superb storyteller as well as a writer of extraordinary grace and stunning perception. The novel was hailed by Rosellen Brown as a "shattering book, imagined with startling emotional precision and generosity." And the New York Times Book Review called it "a triumph of form, pacing and power." Now, with Claire Marvel, Schwartz brings readers into a world so real and beautifully drawn that one does not want the story to end.

A chance meeting in a rainstorm becomes a defining moment of transforming emotion for graduate students Claire Marvel and Julian Rose, two people whose hearts have long been protected behind walls of wit, intelligence, and innate caution. Neither could imagine what lies in store for them: the unexpected unfolding over a dozen years of a great and difficult love.

Moving between Cambridge, Massachusetts, New York City, and the hushed, timeless countryside of France, John Burnham Schwartz explores the many aspects of emotional commitment and the fear of giving oneself to another -- in father-son relationships, in marriage, and in the ecstasy and elation of an elusive but compelling passion. Here is a novel that plumbs with wisdom and compassion the hidden regrets, enduring hopes, and guiding mysteries of a bond stronger than reason. Masterfully written, Claire Marvel is a love story for our time, and a brilliant achievement.

About this title

About the Author

JOHN BURNHAM SCHWARTZ is the author of Bicycle Days and Reservation Road, which have been translated into more than ten languages. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Boston Globe, and Vogue. He lives with his wife, filmmaker Aleksandra Crapanzano, in Brooklyn, New York.

From the Back Cover

"When you finish John Burnham Schwartz’s Claire Marvel - and you’ll do so reluctantly - you’ll know that what you’ve read is true. Yes, it’s a novel but when you travel with Mr. Schwartz you explore passion, betrayal, and the specter of loneliness and you’ll want to finish this most seductive book in one sitting. Don’t. Put it down and let it color your dreamscape. The characters are that vivid, the book so wise you will be moved and enriched." — Frank McCourt

Reviews

Not since Love Story wallowed shamelessly in schmaltz has a novel cast such a sentimental haze over college romance as this third novel by Schwartz (Bicycle Days; Reservation Road). Julian Rose, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Harvard in the '80s, is at the beginning of what might be a brilliant career, having just signed on as assistant to his dissertation adviser, Carl Davis, a schmoozer with the powers that be in the Reagan administration. On the way to his first official meeting with Davis, Julian is caught in a downpour and offered shelter under an umbrella by Claire Marvel, a lovely if capricious art history student. Claire, whose father is dying of cancer, is in no shape to begin a relationship, but she and Julian slowly drift toward each other. A stay in a country house in France is the highlight of their time together, but a series of misunderstandings causes things to go downhill, until Julian catches Davis and Claire together. The unthinkable happens: she marries Davis. Even her marriage can't keep Julian and Claire apart, but when Claire discovers she is pregnant with Davis's child, Julian decides he must leave her for good. Retreating to New York City, where he grew up, he embarks on a career teaching political science at his old prep school and marries another woman, the cool, safe Laura. He meets Claire once in 11 years; one day he hears of her death. Schwartz's tearjerker plot is delivered in velvety, sometimes unctuous prose, and the progress of its protagonists' star-crossed love is contrived, but Schwartz rescues his novel from burnished banality with a number of small, spot-on observations that briefly and unexpectedly lift the story above its conventional moorings. Author tour. (Feb. 19)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Julian Rose meets fellow Harvard graduate student Claire Marvel on a rainy day on the way to see a well-known political-science professor. She gives him shelter under her bright yellow umbrella, and he finds himself smitten. Julian finds himself spending time with Claire, but even after they sleep together, she keeps him at arm's length, especially after she learns of her father's terminal illness. When Claire asks him to accompany her to a small town in France where her father spent some of his happiest days, Julian sees reason to hope. But they stay agonizingly apart, unable to connect until it is too late just as Claire receives the news of her father's death. Returning to Cambridge brings the pair no closer, and when Claire decides to marry someone else, it seems as though Julian has lost her forever. But, as the years go by, she continues to haunt him, even after he marries sweet, trusting Laura. In his third novel, Schwartz allows the reader to see into his characters, even as they remain unable to decipher each other. Julian and Claire's stifled emotions come through in the beautiful prose, making for a bittersweet but compelling novel. A remarkable achievement from a gifted author. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

This sad tale of a doomed romance between a Harvard political science graduate student and the ethereal woman with a yellow umbrella with whom he falls instantly in love fails to make either the romance or the characters believable. Julian Rose certainly convinces himself that meeting Claire Marvel is the pivotal point in his life, but the barely begun love affair founders almost immediately when Claire is swept up by Julian's mentor and thesis adviser, a Reagan supporter with strong right-wing views. Julian mopes, Claire marries the adviser, they resume the affair months later, Claire thinks she's pregnant, Julian leaves, Julian marries well, not to give the whole plot away, but nothing works out. Romance is tough, sure, but these characters make you want to shake them. This methodical, straightforward account of the love affair, told as a reminiscence, is the third novel by the author of Reservation Road and Bicycle Days. Recommended for comprehensive modern fiction collections only. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

There was before her and now there is after her, and that is the difference in my life.

I will begin here because there can be no other beginning for this story. It was the middle of May, 1985. I was walking along Union Street on my way to see a professor one Monday afternoon when the weather turned suddenly. The sky broke open and rain poured down. I sprinted for cover, my book bag thudding against my ribs, reaching the Fogg Art Museum just as the rain became a torrent.

There was a rushing sound as I ran, and a flash of golden yellow.

I reached the museum's low front steps. Standing there watching me from under an umbrella the color of buttercups was a young woman.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But the Fogg's closed Mondays."

Still breathing hard from my sprint I shook my head. Rain the size of Tic-Tacs was pelting me; water was leaking out of my hair and down the back of my neck. I rubbed a sopping shirtsleeve across my face.

She began to laugh, not unkindly. Against the gray stone building and storm-darkened sky her pale face gleamed like bone china.

"Sorry," she said after a while.

"It's okay."

"It's just that you're really, unbelievably wet."

Raising the umbrella a few inches higher she offered me a place beside her.

I hesitated. Hazel eyes alive with amusement; a refined nose above a mouth of promising fullness; straight brown hair falling to the middle of her back; a body slender and lithe. I kept glancing at her, then down at the ground. She wore sandals and the hems of her jeans were frayed and her toenails unpainted and a sexy, glistening wash of spattered rain shone on the pale tops of her feet.

I stepped under the umbrella.

"Better, isn't it? Bring your bag under, too. Don't want your great thoughts getting wet."

Her irony was nimble, inviting. I lifted the flap of my stuffed book bag and showed her my inventory: Party Systems and Voter Alignments (5th ed., 1967); A Theory of Parties and Electoral Systems (1981); Political Parties and the Modern State, (1984). A well-thumbed paperback of Bellow's Seize the Day. Also the current issues of Foreign Affairs and The Harvard Gazette, a spiral notebook, five ballpoint pens, a fluorescent highlighter, and half a roll of LifeSavers. Everything damp, of course, from the rain.

Reading the titles she raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

"It's all right," I assured her. "This isn't the first conversation killed off by my interests."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure Bellow's never killed anybody," she said, "except maybe one or two of his ex-wives." She reached for the book. On the cover there was a black-and-white photograph of the back of a man's head, no face, just a hat visible, a pale fedora with a dark band, the hat tilted up in an angle of recognition or perhaps even of wonder at a skyscraper rising in the background. "Seize the Day's not bad," she said, slipping the book back into the bag. "But you should be reading Herzog. The others--well, I'm sure they're fascinating."

I began to close the bag, then changed my mind. "Want a LifeSaver?"

She cocked her head skeptically. "Depends on the flavor."

"Butter rum," I said.

Brightening, she nodded--a girlish bounce of her head that sent a thrill through me. I peeled the damp foil back so she could take one.

"I forgot how good these are." She was rolling the candy noisily around her tongue.

I stood and watched her. Her simple but vivid pleasure had its own kind of pull. Oddly elated, I told her a story about my grandfather taking me to Central Park to play shuffleboard when I was a kid. His propensity to cheat had led him to ply me with butter rum LifeSavers so I wouldn't tell my parents. It had worked. A tale with which I persevered until I became excruciatingly aware of the drone of my own voice. At which point I faded out.

"Your arm must be tired. Let me hold that for you."

Passing me the umbrella her hand touched mine. Her fingers were cool with the moisture in the air. My gaze hurried over the unbuttoned area of her shirt (man's dark red oxford, worn untucked) yet still managed to get hopelessly stuck on the edge of her black bra.

In a voice of deceptive calm I asked about her field of study.

"What?" she said.

The rain was thunderous. I repeated the question, this time raising my voice practically to a shout.

Art history, she yelled back, first year Ph.D. with particular interest in Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Then without warning she drew three fingers across my eyebrows and shook her hand, loose at the wrist, until the water that she'd lifted from my skin flew off her fingertips like sparks.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

She turned to watch a car passing on the street, its windshield wipers working frantically to beat back the rain.

Too soon it ended. It was not the great deluge after all, coupled beasts driven onto the hastily built ship to voyage for a lifetime. No, a mere spring shower experienced by two relative strangers.

She extended her hand out past the golden canopy, probing for renegade drops. Her shirt cuff drew back, exposing elegant ringless fingers and a very white wrist.

"Well," she said lightly, "that was certainly an adventure."

She was smiling. But it was a distant smile, as if the connection we'd just shared, however fateful or fortuitous, was finished now. She took the umbrella from my hand and began to furl it. She was getting ready to leave.

"I'm on my way to see a professor," I announced simply to keep her there. "I hope he has a towel."

"I'm sure he'll appreciate your tenacity. 'Neither rain, nor sleet. . . .' How does it go?"

"I think that's for postmen."

She laughed, turning her face up to the sky. Just then the sun was breaking through the cloudcover, silvered rays brightening the pothole puddles of Union Street and the fat beads of water sitting like fake jewels on the hoods of parked cars.

"I have to go," she said.

"I'm Julian Rose," I blurted out, offering my hand.

"You're pretty good company in a storm, Julian Rose."

She held my hand for a couple of seconds. Then, a smile at the corners of her mouth, she let it go. She turned and descended the four steps to the sidewalk where she paused, looking at me over her shoulder. Her expression had softened, and for a moment I thought she would come back.

"I'm Claire Marvel," she said casually. "I'm at Cafe Pamplona sometimes. Afternoons. I go there to read."

With that she turned and walked up the street. I watched her until I couldn't see her anymore.

2

I had been on my way to see Carl Davis, Sherbourne Professor of Government and Public Policy, during his office hours. Although I was in his lecture class on American Political Institutions I'd never actually met the man whose brilliant reputation preceded him like the prow of a destroyer. It was my hope that afternoon to introduce myself and persuade him to advise me on my doctoral dissertation. As it was, because of the storm, I reached Littaur later than I'd hoped. The door to Professor Davis' office was closed, and filling the bench in the hallway were three graduate students from my department.

Mike Lewin, a thirty-year-old Brooklyn native obsessed with Joseph McCarthy, looked up from a new book on Hollywood's blacklist and muttered, "Hey. Raining out?" His reddish hair was shaggy, his jaw bristling with the wildfire beginnings of a beard. Beside him, pretending to ignore us, sat Parker Bing. An incongruous pairing, I thought. Bing was from Greenwich. His idea of political life belonged to that anachronistic age of WASP class-worship and finals-club "gentlemen" best exemplified by his heroes Acheson and Harriman. He wore hats and bowties and sometimes even suspenders, which he insisted on calling "braces". Through connections he'd already had a three-month stint in the State Department and preferred to acknowledge only those colleagues he deemed likely to find similar advancement.

The third student was a slender woman from New Delhi named Dal. I'd heard she was a champion squash player.

The bench was full, so I took a seat on the floor. My three colleagues were all reading diligently. I pulled Political Parties and the Modern State from my shoulder bag and made an attempt to join them. But I couldn't concentrate. My damp khakis chafed against my thighs and Claire's yellow umbrella kept breaking into my thoughts. Beneath it I'd stood with her, the rain buffeting the thin sunlike carapace above our heads. Already it was hard to remember what had actually occurred. What had I actually said to her? Had her comment at the end been an invitation, or just a dodge?

"See you," mumbled Lewin, shuffling by. He'd already finished his meeting with Davis. I looked up to see Bing striding into the office and the door shutting behind him. Dal's glance met mine and I raised my eyebrows but she hastily lowered her eyes to her book, a tome called Grassroots Nation, leaving me stranded once again with my thoughts about Claire Marvel.

The odds weren't in my favor, I reckoned. Meeting her had been a freak occurrence, some weird twist of meteorological fate. I'd go on being myself--brain-channeled, sometimes awkward, sometimes amusing; occasionally, in moments as radiant and evanescent as soap bubbles, something more than just smart. But mainly safe. Safety lay not in numbers but in the assurance that where one has already walked no surprises can lurk. There was the future to think about. This was our creed. Among hard-core grad students in government romance was considered a questionable sideline. A muddy source to...

Edition details

• Publisher: Nan A. Talese
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 038550344X
• ISBN 13: 9780385503440
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336