Foreign Affairs is a 1984 novel by Alison Lurie.
It follows two protagonists. The first is Virginia "Vinnie" Miner, a literature professor at Corinth University. Vinnie, an American, is in England on an extended stay in order to do research for a study of children's rhymes and their history. Vinnie, now in her mid-50s, regards herself as plain-faced and unattractive and in any case has given up on the idea of love and is content with growing old alone. She is also rather fussy and prim, so it's a surprise when she falls into an affair with Chuck Mumpson, a boisterous American tourist who is basically her opposite in every way.
The other protagonist is Fred Turner, age 29, another Corinth professor who is in London for his own project, a biography of John Gay
. Fred's marriage with his wife Ruth, aka "Roo", is on the rocks and he has fallen into an affair of his own with with Rosemary Radley, a British actress. The two plots come together when Vinnie finds herself reaching out to Fred on Roo's behalf.
Tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: For Vinnie's story only. Vinnie is about to go off to meet Chuck on Chuck's archaeological dig, when she's told that he has died. She's overcome with grief and also with a what-might-have-been vision of the two of them living in England together...but she also realizes that she "loved, and has been loved," and her life is not as solitary and depressing as she sometimes imagines.
- Child Hater: Vinnie, despite being a scholar of children's literature and children's rhymes, does not actually like kids. She envies them, as she wishes she could be that carefree herself.
- Downer Beginning: For both the protagonists. The book opens with Vinnie, who is generally mopey about not having a man even though she doesn't like to admit it, and is specifically upset at a magazine feature in which a critic specifically called out her research project as a waste of resources. A little later, when Fred is introduced, the reader quickly finds out that he's depressed about his marriage seemingly being headed for divorce, and he's also so broke that he's having to be careful about how much he spends on food.
- Dramatic Irony: Fred thinks that "If Vinnie ever in her life experienced real romantic love, let alone sexual passion, she has probably forgotten it." The reader of course knows that Vinnie is having a passionate affair with Chuck.
- English Rose: Fred regards Rosemary, the actress that he starts an affair with, as "delicately pretty with what he recognized as a typical English prettiness." She's further described as being round-faced with "creamy white skin" and "tumbling flaxen curls." Rosemary gets a lot of work playing English Roses on British TV.
- Foreshadowing: A couple of times, when speaking with first Fred and then Vinnie, Rosemary's voice "thickened and coarsened" and "continues to alternate disconcertingly between refined and vulgar." This is foreshadowing the big twist that Rosemary and Mrs. Harris the charwoman are one and the same.
- Grammar Nazi: When Chuck says he's been bored with life now that he's getting older, he says he "used to really enjoy baseball." In inner monologue Vinnie sneers that he's "a person without inner resources who splits infinitives."
- Gray Rain of Depression:
- Fred regards London as a depressing place where "a cold drizzly rain seems to fall perpetually both within and without." He's standing in the rain and feeling depressed about his failing marriage.
- Vinnie is "staring out through the gray gauze curtains into a blurred street full of rain" as she reels from the news that Chuck has died of a heart attack.
- Grumpy Old Man: Virginia, although she isn't a man and she isn't that old. She has however become a misanthrope, generally avoiding other people and being rude to cheerful, outgoing Chuck when he makes conversation on the plane.
- Happy Flashback: Depressed about his failing marriage, Fred thinks about how he went horse riding with Roo soon after he met her, and they had sex in the stable.
- Immigrant Patriotism: Vinnie isn't quite an immigrant, just someone who happens to go to England a lot. But she's arrived for a research project that will have her staying there for a while, she is thinking about moving to England permanently, and she very much likes England and the English and thinks English culture and language is superior to American. In fact she's kind of snobby about it, which is why she's not impressed with Chuck who is about as American as it gets.
- Kissing Cousins: Fred is pretty surprise to find out that Posy, his host for a dinner party, is having an affair with her cousin William.
- Medium Awareness: The third-person omniscient narration is aware that it's narrating a book. Chapter 3 opens with the narration saying "Unless you know Vinnie well, you would hardly recognize her as the miserable professor that got on the plane in Chapter One."
- Of Corset Hurts: Rosemary calls the corset that she has to wear for her TV show "murder."
- Present Tense Narrative: The entire book is told in present tense.
- Selective Obliviousness: A little girl approaches Vinnie and starts reciting racist, obscene rhymes. Vinnie is not only personally uncomfortable, as she is a quite prim and starchy woman, she also realizes that the girl's rhymes undermine her thesis. So she decides to forget them.
- Separated by a Common Language: Fred thinks about ducking a party by calling and saying that he's sick, then reminds himself that he has to say ill because "sick" in England means nauseous. Later he thinks about how he called Rosemary, then reminds himself that, no, he rang her.
- Fred winds up adopting British vocabulary. "Consciously, so as to be understood, he now uses terms like lift, lorry, and loo instead of elevator, truck, and bathroom."
- Fred sees electricians and carpenters on the set of Rosemary's TV show and thinks that she'd call them "sparks" and "chippies."
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Fred is really, really handsome, which is actually a problem in his job as a professor. His peers tend to not take him seriously and his female students throw themselves at him, which to Fred, a man with a strong sense of ethics, is a problem.
- Spoiler Cover: Some editions of this book were published with a front cover showing a cowboy hat on a bedpost, which basically gives away that Chuck and Vinnie will have an affair.
- Two Aliases, One Character: Fred eventually figures out that his high-class actress girlfriend Rosemary, and Rosemary's foul-mouthed Cockney cleaning lady Mrs. Harris, are the same person. Rosemary, who 1) has long wanted to play working-class characters, but doesn't get offered such parts, and 2) is eventually revealed to be mentally unstable, has occasionally been masquerading as an otherwise non-existent cleaning lady for months.
