ROAD TRIP ROM COM: HERE WE GO AGAIN

I absolutely love road trips.  I am happy to get in the car and drive 13 to 14 hours to go and visit my daughter and granddaughter in Indiana.  I’m pretty happy to get in a car and drive almost anywhere.  And I also love good books about road trips, like The Mostly True Adventures of Tanner and Louise, and everyone knows I love a good romantic comedy.  So when you have a romantic comedy about a road trip, you’re in my sweet spot, which is why I loved Here We Go Again, by Alison Cochrun, so much.

Actually, there’s a lot to love about this book.  It’s funny, it’s charming, it’s moving and in many ways it’s surprising (all good ways, I might add).  The characters are lovable (for the most part; there are some you’re not supposed to love, and that’s fine, too), the plot moves right along, and there are none of those rom com cliches (especially about how the couple breaks up and finds their way back together) that annoy me so much. It even starts with a couple of very funny (and painful) disasters to introduce our main characters (I always like a rom com that starts out with a funny scene).

Logan and Rosemary are both teachers at the local high school.  They are also enemies.  Once upon a time, when they were growing up in the town where they’re both now working, they were the closest of friends, and on the verge of becoming more than friends when everything blew up for them.  When they were both in high school, they took English classes from Joe Delgado, a legendary teacher who saw the strengths in each of them even when they were loudly opposed to each other.  Joe was gay and out, and his acceptance of his own sexual identity made it easier for each of the girls to admit to her own queerness. 

But now Joe is dying of cancer, and he asks both Logan and Rosemary to take him on one last road trip, to a cabin he owns on Mount Desert Island in Maine (they’re starting out in Washington State).  Though neither one wants to spend a lot of time in a car together, they both feel such an obligation to Joe that they agree to do it. And off they go, on a cross-country adventure that takes up most of the book.

There are some things you know from the outset: Joe is going to die by the end of the book (this isn’t the kind of book that has a miraculous recovery), and Logan and Rosemary are going to end up together by the end of the book. 

The fun of the book is watching how Logan and Rosemary get together, and discovering both new things about Joe (including the love of his life), and wonderful things about America.  I’m a little bummed that their trip up the east coast is covered in a page or so, though I understand why it happened that way.  On the other hand, their side trip to the Grand Canyon, their overnight stay in Idaho (which turns out to be surprising) and their sojourn in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, are wonderful, making me want to travel to all those places and experience them for myself.

There’s sadness in this book, of course – I did mention that Joe’s dying, didn’t I? – but it’s a romantic comedy and so yes, there’s a happy ending, a soul-satisfying happy ending for all the characters you’ve come to care about.

The next best thing to a road trip is a great road trip book.  Here We Go Again definitely qualifies.

ONCE AND FUTURE: SWORD STONE TABLE

There’s just something about the stories of King Arthur and the Round Table, the knights and the chivalry and the ideals, that just speaks to people.  I fell in love, personally, with the stories when I was between 8th and 9th grades and I discovered T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, and since then I have read I don’t know how many different versions of the stories, some set in modern times, some set in quasi-historical times, some set in the future. Some of them, like Marion Zimmer Bradley’sThe Mists of Avalon, have become almost canonical themselves, and some were more successful than others.  I am such a sucker for these stories that of course I devoured the new anthology Sword Stone Table, edited by Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington.  The short stories in the collection are more inclusive and more diverse than the originals, and shed new and interesting lights on the stories I’ve known for most of my life. 

Naturally, with a collection of short stories by different authors, there are going to be some that resonate with me more than others.  The ones that are good are excellent, and even the ones I wasn’t that crazy about were entertaining to read. 

Among the best was “The Once and Future Qadi”, by Ausma Zehenat Khan, which imagines that King Arthur consulted a famous Muslim jurist in Cordoba, Spain (in the middle ages known as Al Andalus and a center of Islamic culture) in the matter of Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot.  Having an outsider’s perspective on medieval Christianity and the whole Arthurian ideal is intriguing, and Yusuf, the jurist, is such an educated and intelligent person that it’s a pleasure to spend time in his company.

“I Being Young and Foolish” by Nisi Shawl is another outstanding story, which focuses on Merlin and Nimue, here Nia, an albino woman with magic of her own coming from Uganda to learn Merlin’s magic.  Again, we have an outsider with a completely different angle on Camelot and on the famous Merlin, and Nia is an excellent narrator, curious and confident.

In a more traditional vein, we have Elaine, Lancelot’s lover and the mother of Galahad, telling her story in “Passing Fair and Young” by Roshani Chokshi, and making what was always a difficult story into something charming and beautiful.  I’ve never been a big fan of Lancelot myself, but Chokshi makes him into a human being and much less of a jerk than he comes across in most versions of the story. 

And oh my God, I thought I loved Maria Dahvana Headley after reading The Mere Wife, but her story, “Mayday,” which sets the events of Camelot in turn of the century America and makes Arthur into a would-be presidential candidate and charismatic figure, is one of the best things in a book filled with excellent stories, and makes me love her all the more.  Structured as a list of things for sale at an auction, the story is fractured and beautiful, the description of each piece in the auction acting as another piece of the mosaic, making the reader do the work of putting it all together.  Knowing the original story and seeing how she rethinks it makes the story even more brilliant.  I am now going to look up the rest of her writing and read all of it.

“Jack and Brad and the Magician,” by Anthony Rapp is another more contemporary vision of Merlin and what he might have been up to in New York City during the AIDS epidemic.  The love and gentleness of this story is enough to break your heart, and this is a much more human Merlin than the traditional version.

Bringing in outsider perspectives, adding queer angles and more diverse insights into the Arthurian legend stories is a brilliant undertaking and if you have any interest in these old and beloved stories, and any curiosity in what could possibly be done to make them new again, you owe it to yourself to read Sword Stone Table.