The Story of a Marriage

Locations
Call Number: Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A surprising love triangle submitted by larkspur on May 12, 2008, 8:37am There are many suprises in _The Story of a Marriage_: plot twists (including a big one at the climax), horrors of war, characters that "fill out" suddenly and spectacularly. Perhaps my favorite surprise was the emergence over the course of the book of the secondary characters of "the aunts," two older ladies who watch over, comment on, and try coarsely to shape the main characters' decisions. Late in the book, however, the aunts are (to me) quite suddenly revealed as their own persons, characters with a story that is probably as interesting as the one Greer chose to tell. I was touched by the respect the author showed thusly to the vastness and complication of life.

Most of _The Story of a Marriage_ is small and focused, well-written and evocative of a number of great literary works. Holland, the husband in the titular marriage is only ever shown through his effects on the other main characters, like Irene, the object of desire in John Galsworthy's _The Forsyte Saga_. The strictures placed on the characters by their society, their place and time and gender, recall Edith Wharton's _The Age of Innocence_. The final scene of the novel echoes _Innocence_ quite forcefully, as well.

Greer's short novel raises longer-lasting questions. The central conceit of the book, that those we think we know best are merely "a new kind of stranger," may leave the reader wondering. What if one's life changed forever? What if it was still the same life after all?

Hard stuff went on too long submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on August 20, 2017, 8:28am Really, this is a book about sacrifice and love. And in the end, it does that oh-so-well. The end of the book was so powerful that I revised my opinion of the whole thing.

But along the way? Heartbreak, misunderstandings, silence and isolation. Hard choices in hard situations. It was just so hard to read because of those, and because of how long they went on.

On the gripping hand, the author included more than one utterly shocking one-liner revelations that made me come to a screeching halt while I re-thought everything that had happened up to that point in the story in the light of this new information. So that was very, very well done.