whatcathyread

Hubby’s friend, Steve, was one of the few people I’ve met who could rightly be described as a ‘character’. He did things his own way and seemed to command attention wherever he went. Take the time Hubby and Steve went skiing. Steve arrived in jeans, a raincoat from the Army and Navy Stores, and fingerless gloves – and they were the clothes he skied in. No ski jacket, salopettes, or ski gloves; not even a woolly hat. He became a celebrity, of sorts. Everyone in Hubby’s ski school said they’d seen the man careering down the piste in jeans, his coat and long hair billowing behind him. (Luckily for Steve it was sunny most of the week; when it clouded over he was too cold to ski.)
Steve died suddenly in a car accident, a head-on collision. God help us we wondered if Steve had done something idiotic but it soon became clear he was blameless; the other driver had been on the wrong side of the road.
When someone dies suddenly I guess it’s always a hard thing to process. For the people who knew Steve best it was made harder because Steve was…well, Steve. How could someone larger than life be here today and gone tomorrow? On Steve’s birthday, a group of his friend went for a meal together to celebrate as if he was still alive. He was that sort of person.
Gary Orleck made a more enduring tribute to a dead friend. Travels with Maurice is inspired by Orleck’s friend, Maurice, who died suddenly of a massive heart attack aged 52.
Part One and Part Two recount their meeting at college and subsequent travels around Europe a few years after graduating. It’s 1968 and they rack up almost 20,000 miles in a cherry-red Mustang belonging to Maurice’s sister, Fiona. Their trip includes London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, Copenhagen, Munich, Vienna, Split, Venice, Geneva, Cannes, and Majorca…but the places are almost irrelevant. You see, Maurice is the son of a fabulously wealthy Iranian and although he agreed to stick to Gary’s budget of $3,000 each, his family’s connections mean the trip morphs into “one hell of a wild ride.” “For a boy from Rhode Island, what I saw was unimaginable.” This includes seeing the Iranian Ambassador at Fiona’s London boutique, sharing a hotel restaurant with the King and Queen of Belgium, staying in the Queens Suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Paris as guests of the Shah of Iran’s new wife, the Empress Farah, and partying in “La Siesta…a den of pleasure where the rich and famous of the South of France spent their time and money”.
All good things come to an end: holidays, friendships, dynasties, life. In Part Three, real life takes over – work, marriage – and Gary gradually sees Maurice less and less. In Part Four Maurice is briefly “catapulted” back into Gary’s life when he calls with news that his father had been executed by the Iranian Revolutionary Government after they deposed the Shah.
There are a lot of people and places in this book but its charm lies squarely in the “myth” of Maurice. So what better way to end this review than with something he told Gary: “Always shoot for the stars. That way even if you land on the moon, you’ll be way ahead of everyone else.”
RIP Maurice (Moise) Elghanayan.

Gary Orleck reached out to me and asked me to review his book – so no rating this time. The book is available on Amazon.