Tag Archives: Marriage

Sweet Lamb of Heaven, Girls and Sex, Wink Poppy Midnight

Lydia Millet’s Sweet Lamb of Heaven sounded like it had everything I could want from a book. Anna’s in a bad marriage and has a baby her husband doesn’t want. Now, several years later, her husband is running for public office and Anna is on the run, desperate to keep him from finding her and Lena and using them as pawns. What’s more, she constantly hears a voice running a largely incoherent and incomprehensible monologue in a mix of English and other (possibly unknown) languages.…

Read More »

Opening Belle, Hidden Bodies, Ann Patchett, Norse Myths, and Ellen Raskin!

When I started listing the titles for this post I thought, “wow, I’ve been on a hot streak!” But then I remembered that I’ve had to give up on a bunch of books recently, too. The life of a reader! I grabbed Opening Belle at the library based on the cover and title, and the description sounded too good to pass up. Set (like Everybody Rise) on the eve of the financial crisis, the story follows Belle, a mom of three with a high pressure…

Read More »

Where I Lost Her by T. Greenwood

My love for T. Greenwood has been well-documented in this blog, and I eagerly await every one of her new novels. Thankfully she’s prolific, and with Where I Lost Her, she adds a level of suspense and mystery to complicated family dynamics she so deftly creates for each book. Tess is in trouble. She drinks too much, and she’s just learned something awful about her husband, Jake. On a visit to her childhood friend, Effie (from Greenwood’s debut Breathing Water), Tess is drunk driving home…

Read More »

The Winter Girl by Mark Marinovich

Synopsis: When Scott and his wife Elise move into her father’s Hamptons home to await his death in hospice care, he becomes fascinated by the house next door, which is seemingly empty and not-empty at the same time, and the actions he takes to alleviate his curiosity have devastating consequences. Review: The Winter Girl is a dirty piece of business that makes Gone Girl seem like a romance. I was fascinated by the extremity of the story, repelled by the depravity, and sucked in by…

Read More »

The Blondes, Fates and Furies, And Again, The Fifth Season

Some strong reads in the last few weeks. I want to get Fates and Furies out of the way because I basically hate-read it. I just didn’t get what the big Story was. While I liked Mathilde’s backstory and some of her choices in the second half, I just couldn’t get over how fusty and edge-less it felt to me. Not enough rock ‘n’ roll for a story about young people in the West Village in the late 1990s… maybe because that’s where I lived…

Read More »

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Synopsis: When Alice falls off a bike during spin class, she hits her head and promptly forgets the last 10 years–including her three kids and her ongoing divorce from the husband she believes she still madly loves. Review: I loved the premise of What Alice Forgot but unfortunately didn’t enjoy Alice. I found myself getting annoyed with amnesiac Alice, who seemed like a bit of a drip, and wanting to see more of the bitch she supposedly turned into.

Read More »

Shirley: A Novel by Susan Scarf Merrell

Synopsis: A young couple spends a year at Bennington College living with gothic writer Shirley Jackson and her philandering husband. Review: George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? have nothing on Shirley and Stanley, in real life (as chronicled in the wonderful biography Private Demons), and Shirley: A Novel delivers every ounce of juice you would hope for. Even better–the plot and characters are nothing short of excellent. Author Susan Scarf Merrell uses a thriller structure, and the plot is filled with allusions,…

Read More »

You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Synopsis: On the eve of the publication of her relationship advice book, a marriage therapist discovers that her husband has a secret life. Review: I think I only finished You Should Have Known because the last 5 books I started were so bad that I gave up on them, and I’m also halfway through three different 1200-page epic fantasies, none of which I like enough to get over the doldrums enough to finish them. In short, I feel a lot like Gracie. I put myself…

Read More »

A Circle of Wives by Alice LaPlante

Synopsis: A man is dead, but it turns out he has not one grieving wife, but three–and the detective investigating his murder finds herself affected by his apparent passion for love, and how it shows the defects in her own relationship. Review: A Circle of Wives surprised me with its emotional complexity. If only I could say the same about the plotting. I really couldn’t believe the sloppiness of the ending in an otherwise well-written book.

Read More »