01/25/2021
Hermes (The Phoenix Nest) delivers a breezy travelogue of a woman’s vacation in Europe, her first trip away from home. A native of Milwaukee, Wis., middle-aged Betsy Baumgartner is recently divorced from her philandering professor of a husband and has finally finished her master’s of library science when she decides to take a solo trip to get away from what she used to be: “A comfort. A convenience. A wife.” It’s the early 1980s and her adventure begins at the airport, where she meets Kassim, a handsome Canadian Muslim man. This is the first of several interactions with travelers and locals as she makes her way to France, then Italy, and finally Ireland, where she meets a potential love interest and navigates an Irish Republican riot before returning home. After each meeting, Hermes injects a chapter from the stranger’s point of view, beginning with a story of Kassim’s past as a museum curator in Beirut before he fled from the civil war. These portrayals are meant to go deeper than Betsy’s naive perception, but their expository details don’t make the characters feel very lifelike. The account of Betsy’s eye-opening travels works much better, credibly tracking her growth. Readers who can get past the clunky bits will find some pleasant escapist fare. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman. (Mar.)
Praise for Margaret Hermes: "Relative Strangers is a stunning collection. Every single story is vivid and memorable, and yet the collective thematic effect is powerful. So many of these characters are strangers within their own families and their own lives people thought to be dead are resurrected and another character s survival is akin to death. It s all here change, loss, alienation. But so is humor and compassion and a fresh spin on the way people deal with the most vulnerable aspects of life." — Jill McCorkle
“Wise and confident . . . an exquisitely talented writer.” — Bob Shacochis, National Book Award-winning author of Easy in the Islands and Swimming in the Volcano
“A talented, versatile writer.” — David Carkeet, author of Double Negative and The Full Catastrophe
“Margaret Hermes writes of the sexuality of educated women with a candor and precision unseen since Kate Chopin.” — Peter Leach, author of Gone By Sundown and Tales of Resistance
"Gives a reader something to enjoy and admire on every page." — Jane O. Wayne, Devins Award and the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Award-winning author of The Other Place You Live and Looking Both Ways
“Margaret Hermes writes with humor and wisdom about women who confuse sex for love and love for sex and cannot decide which one they prefer." — Mary Troy, author of Beauties and The Alibi Café
Margaret Hermes writes with humor and wisdom about women who confuse sex for love and love for sex and cannot decide which one they prefer."
Wise and confident . . . an exquisitely talented writer.
"Gives a reader something to enjoy and admire on every page."
A talented, versatile writer.”
2020-11-27
Fleeing the shock of her husband’s infidelities, a Midwestern librarian embarks on a solo trip to Europe that will change her life in unexpected ways.
Sitting in Montreal’s airport awaiting her flight to Paris, Wisconsinite Betsy is acutely aware of her own lack of sophistication. “Each time she heard French spoken she thought reflexively that everyone around her was more cultured.” It’s 1981, and 32-year-old Betsy had spent most of the 1970s as a naïve and clueless wife until the discovery of Greg’s betrayal sent her to divorce court, library school, and now her first trans-Atlantic flight. A casual conversation with a handsome Muslim man she had been observing eases Betsy’s anxieties and renews her confidence: “Already she had made it out of the United States onto foreign soil and into her first adventure.” Betsy’s subsequent encounters—a French consultant’s failed attempt at seduction in a train compartment; an American trio’s plot to entice Betsy into a ménage à quatre in Florence; a Lake Como hotel owner’s clumsily aggressive pursuit—prove more disappointing until a romantic rescue from a Dublin riot by a handsome Irishman spurs her to make her own destiny. How Betsy finds peace is the touching, if somewhat predictable, conclusion. Hermes’ unusually structured narrative alternates Betsy’s journey with chapters offering the perspectives of the people she meets. Some of these stories were originally published separately, so they don’t always seamlessly mesh with the main storyline. The author writes with wit and flair, however, and she vividly evokes the ups (the beauty of a misty evening at Lake Como) and downs (a lonely night in a gritty Le Havre hotel) of European travel.
A romantic escape to savor.
Margaret Hermes writes of the sexuality of educated women with a candor and precision unseen since Kate Chopin.
Gives a reader something to enjoy and admire on every page.
Praise for Margaret Hermes: “Relative Strangers is a stunning collection. Every single story is vivid and memorable, and yet the collective thematic effect is powerful. So many of these characters are strangers within their own families and their own lives people thought to be dead are resurrected and another character s survival is akin to death. It’s all here change, loss, alienation. But so is humor and compassion and a fresh spin on the way people deal with the most vulnerable aspects of life.
This quick-and-clever Hermes has wings on her prose and a god’s eye view, compassionate and wise, of the human comedy. Her plucky heroine’s European journey is replete with excursions into the lives of her fellow travelers, taking us along on a novelistic grand tour de finesse.
When we hearken to the wisdom of our literary ancestors, we get a novel like The Opposite of Chance, and an author like Margaret Hermes, a virtuoso writer navigating the only path that leads to genuine empathy, by embracing multitudes. Bold and brave, Hermes accepts no boundaries on the imagination.
