Amalia's Story, Chapter Sixteen
= Amalia Angeloni Jacobucci
"Ingénue"
Angela Thirkell Book Summaries #7:
Before Lunch!
by Angela Thirkell (1939)
https://angelathirkellsociety.org/writings/book-summaries/
History Brief: 1939 World's Fair
Middle-aged Catherine Middleton, married to an obtuse but endearing older man, is the still center of a swirl of two generations of “gentry” on the brink of WW II.
The activities of youngsters and contemporaries go on around her and it is only gradually that one sees how, without conscious manipulation, nothing happens without her.
The characters are subtly and humorously drawn—keep an eye on the hypochondriac and self-absorbed Miss Starter who displays a shrewd gift for defining the essentials and deflating the fatuous.
At the end, youngsters and oldsters are properly sorted out and paired off, mostly as expected, after several false starts.
Alistair, the older man who sets off after the “ingénue” is nudged back into place with Catherine’s sister-in-law (his contemporary).
She, in turn, sees “her young man” off to seek his dream, ...
It Never Happened (A Memoir In Meme Form)
= CHAPTER ONE: "TEN YEARS AGO THIS VERY DAY"
"It was pretty much exactly ten years ago this very day -- "
“ . . . It never happened."
"Yes, it did. That was the day that my brother met me for lunch at a casual dining seafood restaurant in Wareham, Massachusetts."
"You are deluded."
"The reason I remember it so well is that -- "
"You lie."
"He played one of his l favorite funny, funny jokes on me. Which was to arrange a meeting and then totally stand me up. Which was super super funny. And then he would completely deny it. The first time he ever did this was in 1979. In Harvard Square."
"You fantasize."
"And I believe that this lunch we had together was the first initial swirl, in what was to be my final -- I was circling the drain. For the last time. I was a horrible person! I was the worst type of person a person could be. Also, I was completely out of my mind. My whole entire life up to this point had been just ...
It Never Happened (A Memoir In Meme Form)
= CHAPTER ONE: "TEN YEARS AGO THIS VERY DAY"
"It was pretty much exactly ten years ago this very day -- "
“ . . . It never happened."
"Yes, it did. That was the day that my brother met me for lunch at a casual dining seafood restaurant in Wareham, Massachusetts."
"You are deluded."
"The reason I remember it so well is that -- "
"You lie."
"He played one of his l favorite funny, funny jokes on me. Which was to arrange a meeting and then totally stand me up. Which was super super funny. And then he would completely deny it. The first time he ever did this was in 1979. In Harvard Square."
"You fantasize."
"And I believe that this lunch we had together was the first initial swirl, in what was to be my final -- I was circling the drain. For the last time. I was a horrible person! I was the worst type of person a person could be. Also, I was completely out of my mind. My whole entire life up to this point had been just one long, endless series of psychotic breaks, one after the other, for f -- "
"You are ...
So It Was Pretty Much Exactly Ten Years Ago This Very Day: A Short Story
“ . . . It never happened."
"Yes, it did. That was the day that my sister met me for lunch at a casual dining seafood restaurant in Wareham, Massachusetts."
"You are deluded."
"The reason I remember it so well is that -- "
"You lie."
"She played one of her l favorite funny tricks on me. Which was to arrange a meeting and then totally stand me up. Which was super super funny. And the she would completely deny it. The first time she ever did this was in 1979. In Harvard Square."
"You fantasize."
"And I believe that this lunch we had together was the first initial swirl, in what was to be my final -- I was circling the drain. For the last time. I was a horrible person! I was the worst type of person a person could be. Also, I was completely out of my mind. My whole entire life up to this point had been just one long, endless series of psychotic breaks, one after the other, for f -- "
"You are manipulative. What is it you really want?"
"And ...
