Lit Mags
Protected: Every Creature in the Galapagos Has a Mate Except Me
An excerpt from FANCY MEETING YOU by Louise Marburg, recommended by Elinor Lipman
Introduction by Elinor Lipman
May I start by saying that I love everything about this novel?
Of course, it’s the writing and the wit, but also that the narrator of Louise Marburg’s Fancy Meeting You, Laura, often utters what our own better selves stifle. In this excerpt, she’s heading unhappily to the Galapagos with people she mostly disdains, and without the boyfriend who broke up with her only hours after she paid the hefty deposit.
At 49, things aren’t working out romantically or professionally. With men, she too often “sees signs where there are none.” At work, she is similarly unfulfilled. “I keep meaning to quit and do something I love,” Laura tells us, “but I haven’t thought of anything I’d particularly love to do other than not work at all.” She is, to her credit, aware of her flaws—an alcoholic? She thinks that could be true. And yet, she is just short of apologetic, a self-described “impetuous liar.”
At breakfast on board the Galapagos Magic, she’s reminded of what she claimed, inebriated, the night before: She’s married to a surgeon named Alistair and has four boys. Her job? A psychiatrist. All lies, and inconvenient ones that she’s obliged to remember when sober.
Over the course of the trip, however, the land and its animals have an unexpected effect. The chip on her shoulder changes shape, and, throughout,her wants and wishful thinking keep us on her side. When she confides in the reader, she tells the truth. The ex-beau? She imagined him proposing “with a diamond ring of considerable size.” She dreamed the unlikely question would be asked “just as we crossed the equator, and I would be engaged in two hemispheres.” Laura invites the reader to marvel at her delusions along with her: “Where did I get such an idea? How would he even know where the equator is?”
Before the end of the excerpt, Laura’s 50th birthday arrives, and in its celebration, her rule-breaking is so inspired that it’s exactly right for her—and for us.
How is dissembling and cynicism so winning, even endearing? Because it’s in the masterful, wry, winning voice of Louise Marburg.
– Elinor Lipman
Author of Every Tom, Dick & Harry
