The Story of a Marriage: A Novel | Andrew Sean Greer | A multi-layered shimmer that bedazzles

The Story of a Marriage: A Novel | Andrew Sean Greer | Ultimately rewarding

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The Story of a Mar...

	The Story of a Marriage: A Novel Andrew Sean Greer Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 30 reviews view larger image
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From the bestselling author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a love story full of secrets and astonishments set in 1950s San Francisco ?We think we know the ones we love.? So Pearlie Cook begins her indirect and devastating exploration of the mystery at the heart of every relationship, how we can ever truly know another person.

It is 1953 and Pearlie, a dutiful housewife, finds herself living in the Sunset district of San Francisco, caring not only for her husband?s fragile health but also for her son, who is afflicted with polio. Then, one Saturday morning, a stranger appears on her doorstep and everything changes. All the certainties by which Pearlie has lived are thrown into doubt. Does she know her husband at all? And what does the stranger want in return for his offer of $100,000? For six months in 1953, young Pearlie Cook struggles to understand the world around her, most especially her husband, Holland. Pearlie?s story is a meditation not only on love but also on the effects of war?with one war just over and another one in Korea coming to a close. Set in a climate of fear and repression?political, sexual, and racial?The Story of a Marriage portrays three people trapped by the confines of their era, and the desperate measures they are prepared to take to escape it. Lyrical and surprising, The Story of a Marriage looks back at a period that we tend to misremember as one of innocence and simplicity. Like Ford Madox Ford?s The Good Soldier, Andrew Sean Greer?s novel is a narrative tour de force that confirms him as ?one of the most talented writers around? (Michael Chabon).

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A multi-layered shimmer that bedazzles

Andrew Sean Greer is a riot of talent. He carves his words with such precision that one can have no choice but to be surrender to his writing. His works, including Story of a Marriage, always deal with the subtle underplay of the human mind, and ultimately reveal the fragility of our existence.
I don't want to reveal the stories - a lot of reviewers have already done that. Besides, with this story, more than the story itself, it is the manner in which it is laid out that matters. Almost like midnight-blue silk skeins spread one beside the other.
For those who look for literature, rather than just an easy weekend read, for those who seek to tease from stories a modicum of meaning, The Story of A Marriage has many delights to offer. It will leave a lump in your throat, show you exotic new vistas of the human soul, leave you with the sort of feeling one has when they read a monumental work.
Mr. Greer, thank you for elevating our literary experiences to transcendental levels.

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Ultimately rewarding

I had problems with this novel. It started beautifully but soon became heavy-handed. My interest flagged from time to time. However, I pushed through, and found myself totally absorbed and rewarded by the end. There is one helluva good story here: a young married woman is confronted by her husband's former male lover who insinuates his way into their lives with devastating consequences (yes, there are shades of "Far From Heaven" - if he were alive Douglas Sirk would film this with Halle Berry tomorrow). Though the prose is often arresting (I highlighted a number of passages), there is simply too much of it. Nothing is simply stated and this inhibits the flow of the story. So why four stars? The story is THAT compelling and the prose is THAT good.

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Tinny and Artificial

Pearlie has a taste for aphoristic musings. "We think we know the ones we love," she writes. "But what we love turns out to be a poor translation, a translation we ourselves have made, from a language we barely know." These quasi-Proustian observations and their associated metaphors are brought to a state of high polish. But Greer's plotting doesn't always live up to Pearlie's commentary. A side-story involving a spirited white girl who's secretly engaged to a prejudiced soda-jerk is tacked on to the main plot in a way that's both implausible and underexplained. Pearlie's sympathy for Buzz blooms remarkably quickly, and there's an excess of busily symbolic detail. If the characters watch a movie, overhear a TV show or read the words printed on a paper bag, what they come across will be eerily reflective of their predicament.
Most of all, Greer's first big narrative bombshell doesn't detonate with the force that he seems to be hoping for. After all the wary looks from white neighbors, references to the status of the "colored" population, mentions of Pearlie's "community" and descriptions of visits to segregated lunchrooms, only very inattentive readers will be startled to learn that the Cooks are black; some might even wonder why Pearlie has tried to play such a heavy-handed trick. The surprises in what follows are managed more skillfully, and Greer has clearly done his homework on the time he's depicting. But the artificial, slightly tinny resonance never goes away.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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