Table for Two: Mixed Servings

 

 

 

Table for Two (2024)

By Amor Towles

Penguin Random House, 452 pages

★★★

 

In 2011, Julian Barnes won the 2011 Booker prize for The Sense of an Ending. I will return to that metaphor in my take on Table for Two, a collection of short stories by Amor Towles.

 

Towles is a wonderful novel writer who takes us deep into the psyches of his protagonists and immerses them in their time period. Can he do the same with short stories? Yes and no.

 

The first part of the assemblage is “New York,” six tales that begin or end in the Big Apple. “The Line” takes us to the Soviet Union shortly after the 1917 Russian Revolution. It, World War One, and domestic and foreign opposition to the new Bolshevik government devastated Russia. Urban residents had to adapt to long lines for necessities such as bread, vegetables, and cooking oil. Enter the ironically named Pushkin, who cheerfully stands in lines, holds the places of others, and queues for them. It's an uplifting tale of a man who gets what he needs by not wanting it.

 

This is followed by “The Ballad of Timothy Touchett,” the saga of a nebbish man easily advantage of. He ultimately gets a job at a bookstore that carries some antiquarian titles where Timothy's singular talent emerges: He's excellent at imitating other people's signatures. You can anticipate where that will go, but probably not how it gets there.

 

The remaining four stories are decent, but not necessarily the most relatable unless you’re a highbrow or high-powered New Yorker. A meddling daughter in “I Will Survive” is browbeaten into investigating her stepfather. He says he's playing squash each Sunday but has a surprisingly different activity in mind. “The Bootlegger” is a lesson on hubris focusing on an upwardly mobile man new to high culture but full enough of himself to be offended by an elderly gentleman illegally taping performances at Carnegie Hall.

 

Two more problematic stories are the “Di Domenico Fragment,” involving a mysterious group seeking to reassemble an Annunciation painting from the namesake Italian artist piece by piece. A New Yorker has a relative who has a fragment and smells opportunity. It contains my favorite line from the novel: “No one is born pompous. To obtain the state requires a certain amount of planning and effort.” I’m not sure how many readers will care about the setup, plus everything ends with a sigh rather than a flash.

 

The same lack of a strong sense of an ending also plagues “Hasta Luego.” It seems too improbable to be believable and too histrionic to make readers suspend belief. The plot centers on snowstorm, a cancelled flight, and a happy-go-lucky stranded traveler who cheers up the disgruntled, but is hiding a deeper problem than a day's delay.

 

The second part of the book, “Los Angeles,” takes a 180° turn. It’s one novella-length story, “Eve in Hollywood,” is a pot boiler mystery of voyeurism, blackmail, extortion, scandal, and murder in 1939 Hollywood. Olivia de Havilland is an absent-but-pivotal character who has just finished making “Gone with the Wind.” We are taken inside MGM and served large doses of petulant creatives, abusive producers, enormous egos, and double crossers. We meet Evelyn “Eve” Ross, Ms. de Havilland’s protectoress, and ex-detective Charlie Granger. They are trying to recoup nude photos and negatives of de Havilland snapped without her knowledge. Who took them, who is trying to acquire them for nefarious purposes, and where are they? Towles mixes fictional and composite personalities with icons such as de Havilland, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, David O Selznick, and Irving Thalberg, though the last is anachronistic as he died in 1936.  There is an additional cast of unsavory characters, some forced into sleazy activity and some with darker motives. There are strong currents to wade to keep track of the white hats and the black ones, but it’s a diverting story with a surprise/reprise ending that’s sharper than others in the collection.

 

I liked Table for Two, but I didn't love it. In my view, the short story genre is not Towles’ best. I appreciate that not every idea can become a full-length novel, but I found myself looking for universalizing dilemmas and themes. One-note stories–about ¼ of Table for Two–call attention to being fiction whose note fails to reverberate. Call it a tray of comestibles, some delicious and some disappointing. Somehow, my mixed metaphor seems appropriate.

 

Rob Weir