When Leanne Shapton arrives at Gottino’s, a trendy Italian restaurant in the
West Village, New York, at 8am on a crisp autumn morning, I am not surprised
that the lanky woman ambling towards me is wearing a pair of aviator shades
that belong to one of the characters in her book.
“They’re Hal’s glasses,” she says, referring to the bumbling,
commitment-phobic but loveable British photographer who falls in love with
Lenore, a Canadian food writer. “They’re retro aviators. I got to keep a lot
of stuff from the shoot; it got recycled back into my wardrobe.”
Her novel is one of the most original and engaging books I have read in years,
and I am not alone because Brad Pitt just outbid Julia Roberts to buy it and
star in it with Natalie Portman. It is known as Artifacts, or to give
its full title: Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the
Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris: Including Books, Street
Fashion and Jewelry.
Shapton calls the book, a big American hit, “a story of letting go ... what do
you do with the remains of your dead relationship when all the ghosts come
back to haunt you?”
It’s about falling in love; being in love; and losing love. It’s about what we
do after love goes away. When people disappear from our lives, she says,
it’s the stuff that we are left with that haunts us the most — the perfume
we wore; the letters tied with string; or, in this day and age, the SMS
messages.
“What do you do with it? I kept mooning over shells and little things people
had given me,” she adds. “I kept thinking, ‘Where do all these things go
when people split up? Do they just disappear?’”
I had stayed up all night reading Artifacts, then read it again and
nearly wept when I closed the last page because I knew that I would miss the
characters. It is the love story between two urban, edgy, neurotic
characters who are trying to make a love affair work in difficult times.
They fail, but not without desperately trying. The tragic part, like many
failed relationships, is that they really do love each other.
“He dumps her, but in an avoiding way ... he just fades away,” Shapton says.
“It’s the worst kind of dumping.”
Now here is the unique part of the book. Their love story is told in a series
of “lots” auctioned at a fictitious auction house on Valentine’s Day, 2009.
Each lot — a photograph, an e-mail, a letter, an object of clothing, a
cookery book, and a set of aprons — tells something about the various
pressure points of their romance.
Through the belongings, the reader is drawn into their personalities, their
annoying or loveable habits. Lenore makes lists of what she eats all day
long (an old habit of Shapton’s, who was a competitive swimmer as a
teenager); Hal likes to send postcards. They like to travel, eat; she bakes
cakes. They go to hotels. They are expressive with their emotions. Hal
thinks a lot about old girlfriends.
Lot 1199 is a breakfast menu — a doorknob menu from a hotel, left for Lenore
at 11a Sherman Street, marked with a note from Hal saying “Honey I love you”.
You also see the contents of their wash bags (condoms, face cream, etc) their
clothing (both are rather quirky, funky dressers). There’s a pair of socks
bought at Thomas Pink at Heathrow (Lot 1113 — accompanied by a card reading
“Favorite moments of the year ... seeing you in your reading glasses for the
first time”) or Lot 1021: a Polaroid photograph (of Doolan in a cocktail
dress with a Post-it Note attached: “Had to buy a new dress for this weekend
for the office Christmas party ...”). Two of Shapton’s friends were models
for the couple in the auction photographs.
There are lighthearted moments — dinner parties with friends; their weekend
cottage; their creative outlets — Lenore’s project on “doomed couples”
(Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin; Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes); and a
collection of Lenore’s bras (Elle Macpherson; Cosabella: Chantal Thomass)
and swimming costumes.
There are also the tragic moments: a pregnancy test; Hal’s notes when speaking
to his therapist; Lenore’s tearful letters to her sister about his inability
to communicate, to give her what she wants. “I hate Hal,”
Lenore writes at one time. God, it all sounds so familiar!
And that is why it is achingly poignant. It’s a real romance, the one that all
of us had — the one that got away. It opens with regret, Hal writing a note
to Lenore after their break-up. “Dear Lenore, remember when we ran into each
other at the Oyster Bar a year ago and walking home that night you asked,
‘Is there a relationship that you have regretted ending?’ I didn’t say
anything but I wish I had said, ‘Yes, you.’ That would be my answer.”
And so I am fascinated to meet this perceptive 36-year-old who is herself
engaged to James Truman, the British former editorial director of Condé Nast.
“I wrote this book in a way to clear the way for the relationship I am now
in,” she says. She has previously written a hilarious graphic novel called Was
She Pretty? about a woman’s obsession with her boyfriend’s former
girlfriends (example: “Hugo’s ex-girlfriend Katya was 70 per cent deaf. She
had a gentle way with children and animals”) .
But Artifacts is a break-out success. I am surprised that Shapton is
still working at her day job — as a graphic designer for The New
York Times. “Well, let’s see if the movie ever gets made,” she says
humbly.
She is very Manhattan, in baggy combat trousers, a silk shirt and a scarf.
Long hair tumbles down her face, which has a faint Asiatic hint (her mother
is Filipina; her father Canadian). “No, I am not Lenore,” she says, ordering
a tuna sandwich (for breakfast) and a latte. “I am more Hal. I have trouble
letting go.”
Even though Hal is the one who does the dumping in the end, she says he is the
one who “still holds a torch” over Lenore — “Lenore is more forward-thinking
— she moves on. The last page in the book is her pressed four-leaf clover —
a symbol of hope for the future.” Hal’s last entry is a group of pressed
flowers — a symbol of the past.
The brilliance of the book is how, through the objects, the evolving love
story blossoms, and then slowly sours. By Lot 1287 we see Lenore being
offered a better job than her cake-writing column at The New York Times.
We perceive her anguish (through the lots), then her final rejection of the
job offer — because what is important in her life is Hal. The boyfriend,
however, is endlessly travelling, and, it seems, endlessly searching. It’s
the classic malefemale dilemma.
“Sometimes couples only have a finite number of years,” she muses, and begins
to talk about her past. She grew up in a suburb of Toronto, spending her
time drawing and swimming competitively. Her speciality was the 100-metre
breaststroke and she took part in trials for the 1988 and 1992 Olympics.
“Am I competitive?” She bursts out laughing and points at the cover of Was
She Pretty?
“Also, as a kid, I was a total jock! So alone!” she chuckles. I didn’t even
hear anything, I was under water from the age of 12.”
Her parents encouraged her and her brother (now a successful photographer) to
be artistic. Instead of university or art school, she used the tuition money
to fund a work placement with some of the best graphic designers in
Manhattan. It paid off. Some of those artists, such as Jim McMullen, who
designed the theatre posters at the Lincoln Centre, became her mentors.
She started making books as a child; then, as a recent arrival in New York,
she began working with her first boyfriend, Jason Fulford, a photographer,
to found a non-profit imprint called J & L Books. She cites her
influences as the Canadian writer Alice Munro, the Bloomsbury Group, Lucian
Freud, David Hockney and Edith Wharton.
She seems almost surprised by the fuss that is being made over Artifacts.
She hugely enjoyed writing it and, later, photographing it. “For the Venice
scene we used an Italian restaurant, Da Silvano’s, on Sixth Avenue,” she
says. As for the clothes, she suddenly recalls that the tweed jacket she is
wearing today for work was also once the jacket of Hal Morris. “When we were
done with the shoot,” she says, “My boyfriend was, like, ‘Can I have my
pyjamas back now?’”
We talk about love and life, then the real world intrudes, and Shapton has to
leave to get to her office. She needs to be there by 10am to assign graphics
work for the comment pages. Sometimes she illustrates them herself. And, as
a former competitive swimmer, she somehow manages to be both disciplined as
well as wildly quirky.
She hugs me goodbye and heads to the door, half Hal, half Lenore. I feel
rather bereft when she goes — sitting drinking my lukewarm latte in
Gottino’s — rather as I felt when I finished Artifacts. I
just wish that the conversation, like the characters, went on and on.
Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore
Doolan and Harold Morris . . . is published by Bloomsbury at £12.99. Buy
this book.
Janine di Giovanni is the author of Madness Visible: A Memoir of War
(Bloomsbury)
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