Reading matters

'Isn't It Romantic? An Entertainment' by Ron Hansen

Fiction - paperback; Harper Perennial; 208 pages; 2004.

Isn't It Romantic? An Entertainment is the literary equivalent of a light romantic comedy, probably with Jennifer Anniston and Ben Affleck in the lead roles.

I read it on the strength of Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy, which I devoured -- and loved -- last month, but this book could not be more different in temperament, tone and subject matter.

It's a delightfully quick, frothy read. The Chicago Tribune describes it as "A literary bonbon as sweet and light as meringue" which is pretty much a pitch-perfect summary. Although Isn't It Romantic? An Entertainment feels contrived in places -- with a light dusting of barely-there schmaltz -- it's a fun romp, and I raced through it in just four 20-minute tube journeys.

It opens with French tourist Natalie Clairvaux taking a solo bus trip across America. When her playboy fiancé, Pierre Smith, tracks her down the pair inadvertently become stranded in small town Nebraska. Here, the locals invite them to be king and queen of an annual three-day festival in which the town's founder, a 19th-century trapper from Bordeaux, is honoured.

What ensues is a bit of a French farce in which Natalie is wooed by a 50-something rancher and Pierre is pursued by the attractive young waitress from the local diner. And when the town conspires to hold a wedding for the couple, no one is quite sure exactly which couple will walk down the aisle.

As silly as the plot sounds, there are quite a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in this book. And Hansen writes with such a deft hand, you can picture the scenes unravelling right before your very eyes. Indeed, the book would make a terrific film because it could so very easily be adapted into a screenplay. In fact, I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't optioned it already -- or maybe someone's just waiting for Jennifer Anniston and Ben Affleck to become available, in which case I'd suggest you just hang out for the DVD...

'Mariette in Ecstasy' by Ron Hansen

Fiction - paperback; Harper Perennial; 192 pages; 1992.

"One of the most acclaimed novels of 1991" screams the blurb of this book by acclaimed American writer Ron Hansen.

This doesn't seem much of a recommendation to me, but how else would you market a book about a bunch of nuns living in a convent in upstate New York in 1906? Doesn't sound like a particularly inspiring sort of story, does it? And yet this sparse, beautifully written novel, is an exquisite, mesmerising read. Open any page and the words are impeccably arranged to read like poetry.

Wide milk cows are tearing up green shocks of grass in the pasture. Each chews earnestly, like a slow machine, until the roots disappear in her mouth and she goes back to the grass again.

Mariette in Ecstasy is about a 17-year-old girl who joins the Sisters of the Crucifixion, where her much older blood sister is the Reverend Mother. Into this world of extreme religious devotion, Mariette offers a breath of much-needed fresh air. She is young, pretty and full of life. But she is also incredibly devout and believes that she can commune with Jesus to a much higher degree than the other nuns.

When Mariette begins to show signs of divine possession and begins bleeding from wounds in her hands, feet and side that resemble the crucifixion wounds of Jesus, the nuns close ranks. Is it a hoax or a miracle? Is Mariette duping them, or is she a saint?