by Steve Almond, Julianna Baggott
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Product Description
Two rambunctious, romantic flameouts. One boring wedding. One heated embrace in a quiet coatroom. This is not exactly the recipe for true love. John and Jane’s lusty encounter at a friend’s wedding isn’t really the beginning of anything with any weight to it; even they know that. When they manage to pull back, it occurs to them that they might start this whole thing over properly. They might try getting to know one another first, through letters.
What follows is a series of traded confessions—of their messy histories, their past errors, their big loves, their flaws, and their passions. Each love affair, confessed as honestly as possible, reveals the ways in which Jane and John have grown and changed—or not changed—over the years; the people they’ve hurt, the ones still bruised. The ones who bruised them. Where all of this soul-baring will take them is the burning question behind every letter—a question that can only be answered when they meet again, finally, in the flesh.
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Average Customer Review:
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
 Dance of the Seven Veils, 2007-06-10
This book caught my eye in an overseas airport. Looking, as always, for something absorbing to make a long, long trip more bearable, I thought "Which Brings Me To You" might turn off the tape recorder in my own head and free me from my own introspection. It certainly did that! Sydney to LAX to Detroit to Portland, I was an eager audience for Jane and John's "Dance of the Seven Veils."
These two thirty-somethings meet at a wedding and nearly have sex in the coat closet, then don't and decide to correspond instead. The premise may be unrealistic and the language overheated, but I never mind that in a book -- if you do, then choose something else to read. But if you ever went through that fervent dorm-room phase of trying to summarize yourself to someone who knows nothing of your history, you probably will wish you could have done it with as much wit, self-deprecation and inventiveness of language as Julianna Baggott and Steve Almond brought to this little piece. So seductive, the rhetorical substitution of part for whole, the desire to explain ourselves by explaining what we do and how we feel about it. Have you ever believed that if you could just find the right words, you could give your listener a perfect knowledge of yourself? (Can't happen!) And for that matter, have you ever thought that would be a good thing?
Jane and John are looking for acceptance, or possibly absolution, and they seem to find it in each other. Meanwhile the reader is entertained by passages of unexpected language. Jane writes, "I waited tables at Charles Village Pub and was under the mistaken impression that my life was a work of art... I don't think I have to state this but we weren't really artistes. We were PEZ dispensers with pink candy pop ideology." And a similarly self-aware passage from John: "It hadn't occurred to me, until just then, that Sunny might be interested in me. She was in this category of mother and suddenly she had slid into this seemingly-remote-but-actually-adjacent category of woman, sexual being, potential hoochie-coocher."
The reader might wonder at what point and through what agent did Jane and John have their epiphanies? Or you could just go with the flow and enjoy the imagery. Each letter offers a self-contained story and there is little sense of progression to the book, so once you understand the premise you can more or less pick it up anywhere. I recommend this book to any reader who loves an unusual turn of phrase and doesn't require a linear plot. Julianna and Steve, it must have been a fun book to write!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
(4.5 stars) Great Writing, But Where is the Plot?, 2007-05-02
Steve Almond is like a slugger in a slump. Surely he has the talent to hit tons of home runs (read: write best-selling novels), but, instead, we get base hits (read: superior short stories). He doesn't strike out much; he hits well for average, but so far his Hall of Fame potential has gone by the wayside. Where is the breakout novel we have been waiting for, Steve? We know it's in you. This book, despite its consistant string of base hits, is not it. Taken as a whole, this 'novel' is a collection of short stories strung together. Half are written by our hero-to-be Steve Almond, and the other half are written by the beautiful and charming (to paraphrase Almond's description) Julianna Baggott. The stories read like modern love letters written between two protagonists who are kept apart by circumstance -- a circumstance of their own choosing. The protagonists are two desperate 30-somethings who meet at a wedding. They decide, during an akward fumbling moment in a coat closet before they even know each other's names, to confess their past relationships via letters. The consummation of their brief encounter will just have to wait. Instead of spoiling the ending, I recommend you read the book.
Through their letters, the characters 'confess' to their previous relationship failures. Each letter (or short story) is a work of art. For example, Almond knows how to slow down a scene when the emotion level runs high; and we experience emotion over and over again in each of these letters, as the characters open up to the failed relationships of their past. I must confess soemthing myself: I've never particularly cared to read Baggott's other fiction; but it is certainly raised to a high level through her work with Almond. I enjoyed her writing here.
If you're looking for a template novel with a traditional plot, this is not it. If you're looking for a well-written novel with a non-traditional story-line and exceedingly good writing, then this is your book. It's just not the grand-slam from Steve Almond we've been hoping, for years now, to see.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Great reading for pure pleasure, 2006-10-31
For the last two weeks I have spent my last waking moments curled up in bed with Jane and John, because this is one of those rare books that's so funny and thought-provoking that it deserves to be savored, in small sweet snatches. As each revealed their experiences and revelations about love, and floated them out on a river of good old chemical attraction, I got exactly what I wanted - a satisfying dose of great contemporary fiction.
0 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
 A Romp Through An Affair., 2006-08-23
When boys grow into men, their boyishness is still apparent each time they abandon themselves a little. After a romp in the hay, actually a coat room, the duo decide to part ways physically but not emotionally; they write letters revealing their lives to each other over a period of years. The beginning of their "friendship" was typical for yuppies, talking about their favorite singer, Ted Nugent, and movie starring Myrna Loy and Cary Grant (title escapes me). In the "getting to know you" phase of their correspondence they actually expose too much of their inner feelings and too much description of their sexual activities with others. Letters may indeed be more private than email, but this is the twenty-first century and it's hip to use the internet for any of your needs. Perhaps they don't know how to use a computer. Emails are not private despite the use of passwords, they are public and can be read by others and not just the person intended. Why is it I have to use passwords to get into all of my very own accounts, and others can read my feelings and personal thoughts without my knowing it. Guess they knew a good thing was in private correspondence.
I would never act at Jane and John, never in a coatroom, how very uncivilized. It must be the only plafce for hanky panky in a big city. Now, about you. I trusted you. When I told you of my personal longings and childhood doings as a "singer" I had no idea that the whole world had access to the email and you allowed others to read them. There I was telling everybody and creating a soap opera with a humble man, I thought. How dull and escapism if my confessions were used in an actual "story" as SOs are called in the South. I hurt your ego and I'm sorry.
What about that twenty-nine year old virgin offering to "date" strangers until she finds Mr. Right? I have news for this modern way to become a woman, there is no Mr. Right. Love, true love, gives the illusion that he could be perfect, but no one ever achieves that state if he is human. There will be blowups, as the relationship matures, to test the faithfulness of the one you love. After being apart, not even talking on the phone, they may learn to like and admire something about each other. They might, just might, end up liking and actually knowing the person involved. How can I survive without you? That's the eternal question of being apart. What we had evolved slowly, not like John and Jane. You can't compare him with the other John Mark who idislikes women but like little ones he can handle. Could it be repressed desires or confused imaginative wishing. To give one's life for such is not proper.
I found this romp through the life of two strangers to be brittle and boring with too much descriptions of delusions and too much intimate details which are better left unsaid. They're not the only twosome to have an affair of the heart, only in this situation, the heart was not involved.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Almond and Baggot make a good duo, 2006-08-23
Jane and John meet at a wedding reception and after some witty banter agree on having sex in the coatroom. After the clothes come off, John changes his mind and decides he wants to take things slow because he feels that Jane might be The One. So they decide to write letters, via postal mail only, confessing prior amorous indiscretions. This was an annoying concept when I read it but worked out in the end. The writing is really sharp and clever and just on that alone the book is worth the read.
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