Can You Feel This by Julie Orringer-A Short Story- 2019 -36 Pages

 Can You Feel This by Julie Orringer-A Short Story- 2019 -36 Pages

Having recently viewed the Netflix series Transatlantic, inspired by Julie Orringer's marvelous novel The Flight Portfolio, I was delighted to discover an original short by Orringer was available in the Kindle Unlimited program.

"Rushed into an emergency cesarean section, a woman finds herself in the same hospital where her suicidal mother died. She’s buried the trauma of her mother’s last hours—and also the dread that she might be just as vulnerable to breaking. As the new mother relives one crisis in the midst of another, prize-winning author Julie Orringer turns the joyous event of birth into a harrowing, poignant short story."

From Amazon 

Set in contemporary New York City Orringer perfectly embodied in this story how hidden tragedie

from long ago, the weight of pushed away deaths shape the woman giving birth

Julie Orringer’s Can You Feel This? is part of Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single setting.

Julie Orringer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Portfolio, The Invisible Bridge, and How to Breathe Underwater. Winner of the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize, she has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. She lives in Brooklyn.

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer - 2010 - 782 Pages

Paris in July 2019 - Week Two

Website of Julie Orringer

“To be in Marseille, not Paris, still carried a certain novelty, a whiff of the unknown. If Paris reeked of sex, opera, art, and decadent poverty, Marseille reeked of underground crime, opportunism, trafficked cocaine, rowdy tavern song. Paris was a woman, a fallen woman in the arms of her Nazi captors; but Marseille was a man, a schemer in a secondhand coat, ready to sell his soul or whatever else came quickly to hand”.  From The Flight Portfolioby Julie Orringer

Works Read so for Paris in July 2019

1. At the Existentialist Cafe:Freedom, Being and Apricot  Cocktails by Sarah Blackwell.  2016 - An exploration of the Parisian origins of French post World War Two Existentialism 
2. Suzanne's Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris by Anne Nelson. 2017- an important addition to French Holocaust Literature
3. Journey to the Edge of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine -1932
4. Death on The Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Celine - 1936
5. "Luc and his Father" - a set in Paris short story by Mavis Gallant - 1982
6. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer - 2010

Paris in July, hosted by Thyme for Tea, is going great.  Besides posts on literary works, people have shared wonderful posts on French food, Paris architecture, and more.  It is a good way for book bloggers like me to expand my knowledge and contacts.  

Last month I posted on Julie Orriinger’s set in Marseile during World War Two novel The Flight Portfolio.  I loved this book.  It is based on the efforts of Varian Fry, an American living in Nazi controlled Paris, to smuggle prominent Jewish writers, artists, and intellectuals out of France.  

The Invisible Bridgewas her debut novel.  Based partially on familiy history, it is also set during War War Two.  The story begins and ends in Budapest, with a long wonderfully rendered Parisian middle.  It is story of three Jewish brothers from Budapest.  

Paris, 1937, Andras Levi has just arrived,leaving his native Budapest with a mysterious letter to be delivered in Paris.  He is there to enroll in Architectural School.  Orringer does a wonderful job letting us watch as Andras gets to know Paris.  I really enjoyed time spent with him working in a theater.  We see him make friends, fall deeply in love, learn French all while missing his family.  The Germans take Paris and Jewish students lost their scholarships. Andras is The oldest brother.  The middle brother gets into medical School  in Italy, the youngest aspires to be a dancer.  The woman Andras loves, also Jewish, is originally from Budapest.  She has a dark secret.  

Thinks get worse and worse for Jews in Paris.  A family emergency takes Andras and his wife back to Nazi controlled Budapest.  Hungary is an ally of the Germans.  Andras is forced to enroll in a labor brigade.  The conditions are brutal.  Things get worse and worse in Budapest.  

Orringer does a masterful job depicting the horrors of the slave labor camps and Budapest during the War.

There is just so much in this amazing novel.  The two cities Budapest and Paris are sites of great misery,shame and courage.  All of the characters were very real for me.  People I did not like at first became admirable.  There is extensive descriptions of meals, as food shortages got worse.  There are heartbreaking events, we see people at their worst and best.  We learn a lot about architecture, Hungarian history and culture, and the theater.

I wished The Invisible Bridgewas another 782 pages.  Reading this book was a wonderful experience for me.  There is much more in the novel than i have mentioned

Julie Orringer is the author of two award-winning books: The Invisible Bridge, a New York Times bestselling novel, and How to Breathe Underwater, a collection of stories; her new novel, The Flight Portfolio, tells the story of Varian Fry, the New York journalist who went to Marseille in 1940 to save writers and artists blacklisted by the Gestapo. All her work has been published by Alfred A. Knopf, and her books have been translated into twenty languages. Her stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story and The Scribner Anthology of American Short Fiction. She is the winner of the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children, and is at work on a novel set in New Orleans. From the author's website

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The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer - 2019 - 566 Pages

“To be in Marseille, not Paris, still carried a certain novelty, a whiff of the unknown. If Paris reeked of sex, opera, art, and decadent poverty, Marseille reeked of underground crime, opportunism, trafficked cocaine, rowdy tavern song. Paris was a woman, a fallen woman in the arms of her Nazi captors; but Marseille was a man, a schemer in a secondhand coat, ready to sell his soul or whatever else came quickly to hand”.

Website of Julie Orringer


Cynthia Ozick's Review of Flight Portfolio - from The New York Times

Varian Fry (image above)

October 15, 1907. New York City

December 7, 1941 - USA declares war on Germany

September 3, 1967 Redding, Connecticut

Varian Fry's father was an affluent stock broker, the epitome of Protestant Wasp gentility.  Fry, a Harvard graduate, was meant to join the American between the wars elite.  In 1935 he took a trip to Berlin.  He was deeply appalled by the violence directed against Jews by the Germans.  Five years later he is living in Vichy controlled France, in Marseille, directing the American funded Emergency Relief Committee.  Their mission was to get prominent Jewish artists, intellectuals and anti-Nazi dissidents to the United States.  He eventually helped over 2000 people designated for deportation to death camp escape.  (1994 - Fry became the first United States citizen to be listed in the Righteous among the Nationsat Israel's national Holocaust Memorial, award by Yad Vashem.From Wikipedia)

Orringer has turned this history into a true master work.  She makes Marseille into a character in the novel.  I felt very much I was walking the streets of Marseille, feely a bit too secure, smelling the sea, eating the food, dealing with corrupt officials and ordinary French citizens trying to figure out how to survive the food shortages.  Fry finds his clients challenging, among them are the great artist Marc Chagal, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann's son and daughter in law, numerous Surealists and anti-Nazi leaders.  

Orringer shows us lots of people involved with the work.  Everyone is totally viable.  The people all were very interesting. Marseille is a dangerous place.  The Vichy government is under the thumb of the gestapo.

A romance is center stage in Flight Portfolio (I really liked the name of the novel once I learned where it comes from) between Varian and another man. This relationship goes back to their days as Harvard students.  The other man is hiding a secret.  Varian is married, his  wife is rich, eight years older and she accepts his attraction to men. 

There are  interesting plot turns  among frequent exciting developments in the efforts to get people out of France.  Varian finds way to deal with all sorts of problems, though he has his failures.  

I found Flight Portfolio deeply enthralling, almost painfully  so at times.  I did wonder how the hidden family background of Varian's boyfriend related to the Germans treatment of Jews.  I think we are being told to look deeper into our own history.

Flight Portfolio is a beautiful profound work of art.  I give my great thanks to Julie Orringer for the years that went into this novel.

I hope to read her debut novel The Invisible Bridge in July.

Julie Orringer is the author of two award-winning books: The Invisible Bridge, a New York Times bestselling novel, and How to Breathe Underwater, a collection of stories; her new novel, The Flight Portfolio, tells the story of Varian Fry, the New York journalist who went to Marseille in 1940 to save writers and artists blacklisted by the Gestapo. All her work has been published by Alfred A. Knopf, and her books have been translated into twenty languages. Her stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story and The Scribner Anthology of American Short Fiction. She is the winner of the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children, and is at work on a novel set in New Orleans. From the author's website

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