The Genius of Affection: A Novel

By Marilyn Sides and TurtleMe

An emotionally powerful, poetic novel about a woman's struggle with the complexities of modern romance and the conflicting impulses of her heart and her mind. Lucy, a professor at a university near Boston, is turning forty. She has achieved what, as a romantic, novel-reading girl of the suburbs, she set out to do in her life: have affairs, travel, and write books--biographies of women that read like novels. Now Lucy wants more. She seeks not just love (she has had that) or just any marriage (she discovers she is not that desperate) but a true companion with whom she can make a home. Lucy is also haunted by the fact that, at forty, her chance of having a child is slipping away. There are three very different men in her life, but none can join her in her vision of home and family. David, an older man and fellow professor, is quite content to be with Lucy on the weekends and to have his house and his work all to himself the rest of the week. Arthur, who has just taken a job at the university and is caring for his dying wife, is attracted to Lucy, but his desire for her is more fantasy than anything he might act upon. Michael, a historian of gardens who is on sabbatical in Japan with a wife he no longer loves, has left Lucy with memories of a tumultuous, passionate affair and no hope for the future. It is time for Lucy to act for herself and make her vision of a new life a reality. Marilyn Sides invokes the beauty of faraway places and employs rich, lyrical language to describe Lucy's quest for a profoundly ordinary life. The Genius of Affection confirms Bob Shacochis' praise for Marilyn Sides's collection of stories, The Island of the Mapmaker's Wife & Other Tales: "What a fascinating and original mind has Marilyn Sides, a writer whose head and heart brim with the unlimited world. . . . Ms. Sides makes writing itself seem like a dangerous and erotic pleasure."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0517704447
• ISBN13: 9780517704448
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Harmony
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.0" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Delightful, captured personalities, lighthearted seriousness

I really did not want to like this book at first due to tired cliches about an ordinary educated woman living an ordinary life, including all her dysfunction. How wrong I was as I pushed through the first few chapters. The author has done a superb, delightful job of capturing the idiosyncrasies that make one an individual and the subtlety of maturation. Additionally, little gems here and there made the book a completely wonderful read.

The Journey of Self-Discovery

"The Genius of Affection: A Novel" is a wonderful read for someone who is serious about books. It's intelligent, mature, and very gripping. I found it to be beautifully written with so many points of interest. It's not just a quick and easy read. This book is meant to be enjoyed and studied. The story of a women's growth beyond the "passionate affair" and into the world of "everyday life" could have become plain, boring and complacent, but the author kept it fresh and interesting. The language is wonderful and as previous reviewers have said, you can almost hear Jane Austin hanging overhead. It's a wonderful book that should be savored and enjoyed.

The "Genius of Affection" is Marilyn Sides herself.

While upholding the lyrical promise made by her first book, *The Island of the Mapmaker's Wife*, Sides manages to take a step of great spiritual importance as well, with her new one. Speaking for many women of her time she redefines what, for women now, it means to be "adult" - quite simple to care for someone outside one's self - a someone only occasionally a man. Marilyn Sides herself, in teaching us this lesson, reveals herself to be the Genius of Affection herself.

A terrific book about the struggle to find one's family.

This is a book for all of us whose grown up struggles to find and build a family didn't quite turn out to be like "Father Knows Best."If you are looking for a quick read, a superficial "woman looses man, then finds herself" or a predictable story: skip this book. If you want something deeper, with substance and a strong clear voice by an author who reaches down and mines every absolutely everything to tell the story; buy this book now.The novel travels from Boston to Mexico to Japan and Denver then back home to Boston. But the emotional journey is what elevates the book from good to terrific. The emotional depiction of a lifeless marriage set within a house decorated in the Shaker style cut so close to home that it wasn't until after I finished the book that I remembered I never actually owned any Shaker furniture.The crushing feelings of death in life, the standing on the edge of the party, struggling to glide along over the ice in brand new skates, the stark, cold chanting to yourself: "I have nothing." The silly things people do to themselves to rationalize things like a "genius of affection" into existence. The raw emotional power of the story keeps you reading. But with all that, what also happens is tremendous warmth, laughing out loud, the lasting kind of love that can only come from real pain. And finally, after a visit back to the protangonists childhood home,(and a description of the meal so well written I was smiling about it days after reading the book) after the empty dinners of adulthood, the yuppie tribal gatherings,and the joining into a spiritual family not measured by 2.3 kids, a mini van and soccer practices; the author finds that family.In the end, there's so much hope here.A story told so well, I left feeling there is hope for us all.