Giulia, meet Isabel. I am delighted to make this introduction, because having listened to both of you first-time writers read your memoirs on audio, I can confidently predict that you will be great friends. You are both New Yorkers, you are both around 40, you both have a great sense of humor, you both like to cook, and you have both come out on the other side of being dumped by shitwits.
Giulia, Isabel Gillies is that Tea Leoni-like actress you’ve seen from time to time playing the detective’s wife on Law & Order: SVU. Now you’re seeing her memoir Happens Every Day plugged as the Read du Jour at every Starbucks in America, so pick it up the next time you are grabbing a latte in your Park Slope hood. In the book, Isabel tells the story of her marriage to an Oberlin College professor, with whom she was desperately in love and who fathered her two little sons. She had thrown herself into small-town college life, teaching as an adjunct in the theater department, working at a farmer’s market, and renovating an old brick house near campus. What’s especially interesting about the story is how quickly her fairy-tale marriage seemed to unravel; after having what she termed “the summer of love” at her family’s place in Maine, her husband began to withdraw from her and the children, and had all but left the marriage by Thanksgiving. (Although he swore up and down that all the time he was spending with a young female colleague was strictly professional, and accused Isabel repeatedly of paranoia, he and the colleague are now married, so apparently Isabel was on to something. Did I mention that this woman was one of her close friends?!)
Giulia, I can tell from your own book that you are an avid reader, and you probably know that there are two different kinds of good memoirs: the ones that stand out because the writing is exceptional, and the ones that stand out because of the author’s candor and raw emotion. This one belongs in the latter category. Isabel is not a writer’s writer, but she is intimate and girlfriendy, dishing on the everyday and the sublime with equal humor. She does come across as neurotic and slightly inappropriate, with a tendency to overshare—but it’s a memoir, right? Although she changes the names of the people involved, Oberlin is a small campus, and it takes a 45-second Google search to ID the lone hot poetry professor in its English department, his fashionable new wife, and their bookish friends. (Yes, of course I Googled them all. You would have cyberstalked them too; it’s a very interesting break-up story.)
Isabel, now it’s your turn. I figure you are in the market for loyal, strong female friends now that you have moved back to NYC to reclaim your life post-divorce. Allow me to introduce Giulia Melucci. Giulia can tell you a thing or two about relationship disasters and men. She’s dated them all, and in her funny tell-all, I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, she describes them with little mercy and much satire. Actually, I should clarify that she hasn’t dated every man, she’s dated the same man every time: he must be commitment-phobic, immature, slightly artsy/creative, and either poor or a cheapskate. Responsible, caring men with stable jobs need not apply. (Hey, Isabel, you might be judgmental about this, as you confess you often are, but you had a man who seemed to be caring and stable, and look how that turned out.)
Giulia is intelligent, funny, and perceptive about people (except, of course, when it comes to boyfriends). She’s also a fantastic cook, and the memoir is full of the recipes she cooked for various doomed relationships and occasions. For example, when making morning-after pancake batter, she advises not overmixing, because really, Mitch isn’t worth the trouble. Most of the recipes draw from Giulia’s Italian-American heritage: gnocchi, lasagna, pesto, and the like. This is not a book to read when you are hungry, but the recipes sound delicious.
FYI, Giulia had a really painful breakup this last time—a Scottish writer who mooched off her generosity (and her cooking) for months on end and then left after she helped him secure a six-figure advance for his quixotic novel. This is the only section of the memoir that still sounds bitter, possibly because the pain is still so fresh, or possibly because Mr. Scot both broke her heart and used her professionally. Yet at the end, you get the sense that Giulia’s going to be fine on her own, and is not bridgetjonesin’ for a new boyfriend.
Well, both of you got some relationship payback, I think. Congratulations on your engaging memoirs. Toast each other with a bottle of the white wine you both like to drink and enjoy the fact that two strong, witty, smart women are surviving just fine.
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