Three Monkeys Online

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The Object of my Affection – Stephen McCauley

Lovely! This is a truly enjoyable novel, dealing with the drama, the emotions and the excitement of love, friendship, parenthood, relationships, but particularly with those of growing up.

The story revolves around two main characters: Nina, a beautiful, cranky and insecure thirty year old aspiring psychologist, and George, homosexual, messy and just as insecure kindergarten teacher in his mid-twenties, and is narrated by the latter, in a easily readable style, seasoned with auto-irony and benevolent sarcasm.

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The two protagonists are surrounded by a group of lesser characters just as well delineated as Nina and George. There’s Nina’s lover, Howard, an ultra-liberal lawyer besotted with, and unwanted by, her; Dr Robert Joley, George’s ex-boyfriend, intellectual and full of complexes (he can’t sleep in the same bed with any of his lovers and without “the hummer going” aka “a perforated object the size and shape of a small hatbox” that makes a light and continuous buzzing noise); Timothy, a gay friend of George’s, with his own fixed ideas: he loves tidiness and would like to ‘reform’ George’s inconclusive work and love life; Melissa, the crew-cut, young teacher at the kindergarten; the Vermont-based New Age journalist Paul, his mother Molly and his adoptive son Gabriel; George’s neurotic family, which includes his parents and his brother Frankie; Mrs Reynolds, the frustrated teacher at the third age recreational centre George and Nina frequent for their dancing lessons.

In short, the plot is quite simple: George moves in with Nina in her Brooklyn apartment, after learning from Nina herself, at the party where they just met, that Joley, his long term boyfriend, is about to dump him. Nina and George develop this affectionate relationship, which evolves from shared chaos and room-matey intimacy into deep friendship, bordering romance. When Nina finds out she is pregnant, she prefers the idea of raising the kid with George as a surrogate parent than with the baby’s real father, Howard. George is not sure of what he wants or is able to do in this situation, complicated by the fact that he meets ‘someone special’ on the fringes of an attempt at reviving his relationship with Joley.

Both Nina and George must confront choices and responsibilities, and, to do so, they must be able to analyse their own feelings, expectations and inclinations. Neither of them is mature or emotionally stable to easily succeed in the task, but are these weaknesses that make them so lovable to each other and to the reader.

The novel is sparsely autobiographic, loosely based on a romantic friendship the author, American writer Stephen McCauley, had with a beautiful woman who later married someone else. Besides, McCauley too worked in a kindergarten and lived both in Vermont and in Brooklyn, as does George in the book. A certain grade of autobiography seems to be common to other works of the author, such as The easy way out, based on his years working as a travel agent, or The man of the house, which deals with a father-son relationship, and was inspired by McCauley’s difficult rapport with his own father.

The object of my affection suddenly became very popular following the release of the homonymous film by 20th Century Fox. The film stars Jennifer Aniston as a very improbable Nina and Paul Rudd as George, but allegedly has very little to do with the novel’s atmosphere and McCauley’s sardonic narrative style. I shouldn’t really make any comment in this regard, having seen no more than trailers for the film, but I would like to say that the book is much more than a romantic comedy. As well as being very funny – it’s that self-deprecating humour that pulls a laugh out of you even if you try to control yourself in a train carriage – McCauley’s novel explores George and Nina’s feelings, but not necessarily those for each other. There’s much more to it than ‘sex with a homosexual’ or ‘sleeping with my best friend’. The book also deals with becoming an adult, facing parenthood, valuing friendship.

True Enough was optioned by A4 Films in France. Sam Karmann has written the screenplay and will direct. They are planning to begin shooting in France in June 2005″, reports the author’s official website. Hopefully this time around the screen writer will have caught the essence of McCauley’s style and not only a good idea for a box office film.

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