THE GIRL ON THE BELVEDERE

Seeking to quiet a lifelong sense of insecurity and a persistent need to please others, Forrest enrolls in a French language immersion course in Quebec and expands her personal universe.

In 1957, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, celebrated the state’s semicentennial by burying a new Plymouth Belvedere as a time capsule to be resurrected 50 years later. Four-year-old Tulsa native Forrest was plucked from the gathering crowd and placed on top of the shiny new car, with Forrest promising her father she would return for the Belvedere’s excavation. In 2007, she was back on the stage for the ceremonial raising of the car. “I thought that this was an ending of sorts, and it was,” she writes. “Little did I know that my true life, my authentic life, was just beginning, rather than cruising to a quiet conclusion.” Forrest’s father worked as a mechanic for American Airlines, and family vacations involved flights to interesting places. She began ballet lessons at 4, eventually becoming an accomplished dancer. Ballet provided sanctuary from a critical mother, and its French terminology exposed her to a language she grew to love. In her 60s, she cast aside her carefully orchestrated to-do lists and flew to Quebec for a French immersion course, an experience she chronicles in hypermeticulous detail in this combination travelogue/emotional journey. Vivid descriptions of Quebec are filled with the colors, architecture, music, and tastes of a city that captured her heart: “I watched the early-morning sun glinting gold on the windows of the Hôtel de Ville and the Basilica. It was a daily show that was never the same.” Although the narrative contains little tension and minimal action, Forrest brings readers along as she confronts her lifelong anxieties, builds fluency in French, and establishes new, lasting friendships among an international assortment of students: “Quebec…changed me. I had more confidence, more belief in my own uniqueness.”

Engaging, beautiful imagery, albeit dramatically light and overdetailed.