Just the sweet cover of Elizabeth Berg's The Story of Arthur Truluv makes me want to read it. Once I got started, I didn't want to stop. In this book Arthur is an octogenarian grieving the loss of his beloved wife, whom he refers to as Nola Corrine, the Beauty Queen. Each day, he takes the bus to the cemetery to have lunch with her. He talks to her headstone, telling her all about his days and the weather. He misses her so much and just wants to feel like she can still hear him. One day, he notices a teenage girl sitting under a tree in within the cemetery walls. Then he notices that she comes back day after day, too. Wondering what she could be doing out of school and never seeming to visit any grave in particular, he waves to her, then introduces himself. Soon a friendship between Arthur and the girl, Maddy, develops and it is utterly sweet. Maddy has her own troubles, and a nose ring that Arthur can't understand, but she is able to talk to him in a way she can't talk to anyone else. Also chief among the cast of characters is Lucille, Arthur's long-time next door neighbor. Bossy and nosey, she nevertheless becomes an important part of his life.
This book is darling. I really loved the characters and Arthur's sweet, sage advice is as good for eighteen-year-old lost girls as it is for eighty-year-old wandering spinsters. When Arthur visits the cemetery each day, he pauses at other random graves, reads the headstones and then "gets" things about those buried there. He knows (or imagines he knows) things like how they met their spouses, their favorite flowers, the things they liked to eat. He even "gets" a story about one man's red robe, a Christmas gift that caught on fire after bumping a candle the first time he tried it on. These little stories are sprinkled throughout the book and add so much texture and love and it then occurs to the reader that we are "getting" Arthur's whole story, or at least more than the snippet we get of the others. Quick! Someone hug me!
One bit that really spoke to me is when Lucille feels she is old and useless, that she has nothing left to do in this world.
"It's so embarrassing to be useless."
Arthur refuses to believe anyone is useless.
"Did you ever hear anyone say they wanted to be a writer? ... Everybody wants to be a writer...but what we need are readers. Right? Where would writers be without readers. Who are they going to write for? And actors, what are they without an audience? Actors, painters, dancers, comedians, even just ordinary people doing ordinary things, what are they without an audience of some sort?
See, that's what I do. I'm the audience. I am the witness. I am the great appreciator."
I think it can be tempting in this world to think that if we aren't the writers or the actors or the painters that we have no value, but I kind of like the idea of being the great appreciator.
There are so many good lines in this book.
"Are you hungry?'' Lucille asks. Her favorite thing is asking that and having you say yes.
"Sometimes I wonder what the world would sound like if everybody stopped complaining. It sure would be a quiet place."
And my favorite:
Love is never foolish. Or unnecessary.
I may not be an octogenarian, but one small part in this book made me feel a bit old. It happens when Maddy talks about owning her mother's Tori Amos CD collection. She talks about it like I might have thought about my parents' Eagles albums. I suppose the passing of time sneaks up on all of us.
Can I get another hug?
This book is wonderful and sweet and lovely. I really enjoyed reading it and I hope you will, too.
Hugs for everyone!
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