Julie G's Reviews > Goodbye Without Leaving

This was Laurie Colwin's penultimate novel, and the last one she saw published before she died, unexpectedly, of an aneurysm, at the age of 48.

It's an unusual book, with a title that has nothing to do with the story, and a boring cover, to boot. I can also accuse it of meandering. Meaning: it lacks a central focus. But, although Ms. Colwin meanders in her storytelling, she manages to do what two other favorite writers of mine, Ray Bradbury and Boris Pasternak, do when they meander: stumble upon greatness.

This novel has a clumsy beginning, and a clumsy protagonist, Geraldine Coleshares, a grad student who is suffering from a “failure to launch” (or so her parents say).

Geraldine doesn't really want to do anything but sing and dance, and, it turns out, she's good at it. She manages to land a gig as the only white backup singer and dancer to a famous Black duo (think: Ike and Tina Turner).

Gerry's life, from that point on, is one of spontaneity and non-traditional roles. She knows how to “wail and boogie,” but family, friends and romantic partners want something different from her. Her struggle, throughout the 1970s, is a common one: what should she do, and what does she need to give up?

Her life goes from interesting to fascinating when she takes up with a foundation that is comprised of Holocaust survivors and she faces her own cultural identity as an “assimilated Jew.”

It's a quirky story, and I can imagine that some readers could find it too random, or a bit clumsy in parts but, to be honest, I cried on my front porch yesterday, as I closed the back cover.

I feel like Ms. Colwin sat down and started writing this, and she didn't stop until a dynamic story formed. Isn't that how some of our best stories are shared?

Sometimes we get so swept up in dotting our “i's” and crossing our “t's,” we lose the juicy bits.

There's a scene in this novel that I might think about for the rest of my life, when the now-married Geraldine meets a man that she senses she must know intimately:

When we connected, I felt a deep, inward shiver. This was not like having sex for having fun or having children. It did not seem to be about falling in love, or even about having a sexual encounter, but about some ancient, primitive longing desperate to be fulfilled. [He] was more like a destination than a person. Being near him gave me access to something I needed to know.

Frankly, I found this a riveting concept. We have placed so many legal and religious ideals on the institution of marriage for several centuries now, and, though I understand some of them (and have benefitted from several of them myself), I also wonder if we haven't also been shortsighted in the way we assume marriage should be. Do we stagnate? Do we limit ourselves too much?

Ms. Colwin never seemed to shy away from complicated subjects like these, and her writing works a little magic on you, too.

Oh, my heart! I want to read everything she wrote, but I never want the list to end.