5 Page-Turning Books About Marriages on the Brink (Exclusive)
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Other people’s marriages can appear impossible to break open and parse — no two couples are the same. Aside from cringe-inducing dirty-laundry airing in the AITA Reddit community, there’s no better way to peer inside this mysterious institution than through the pages of a book. Literature allows us to see a relationship from all angles, all perspectives, over time.
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Riverhead Books
My new novel Consider Yourself Kissed follows Coralie and Adam for 10 years, spanning Coralie’s entire thirties. Against a backdrop of contemporary London, they grow, change and struggle with career highs and lows, parenthood and blending families, bereavement, homemaking and breaking news. Can the flame of their love survive? (What even brought them together so romantically in the first place?!)
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Here are four novels and one work of nonfiction that take you deep inside the mysterious union of marriage. Read with horror as the couples teeter on the brink!
‘Ordinary People’ by Diana Evans
Liveright
Ordinary People opens in 2008 in a pumping house party in South London. Music pounds, and cool guests in their twenties and thirties dance the night away shouting “Obama” when anyone shouts “Barack!” Among them are Michael and Melissa, both Black, a long-term couple with young children. But unlike after the parties of old, there will be no gentle, intimate waking up together the next day. Someone will have to get the Cheerios for their toddler. With her exuberant and playful language, Evans vividly captures the claustrophobia and entropy of Michael and Melissa’s lives, as well as their shared joys and connections.
It’s impossible not to want the best for both of them, even as it’s hard to know if their relationship can— or even should — survive. Ordinary People is brilliant: sensitively observed and told with flair.
‘What I Loved’ by Siri Hustvedt
Picador
Do you ever have that feeling where you need a good cry? As though feelings have been building up for a while and only a good sob will let them out? This is the book for you. It’s a beautifully written novel that brings alive the artists’ lofts and studios of downtown New York as it follows gentle, academic Leo and Erica as they become friends with talented artist Bill and unusual (but intriguing) Lucille who live next door. They both have sons around the same time.
The couples are close, even when Bill leaves Lucille for his life model, Violet. But the leaving of Lucille is not the dramatic turning point of the novel. That (no spoilers!) comes about halfway through, and it’s devastating. Leo and Erica’s marriage is riven, just as Bill and Lucille’s had been. Will they manage to salvage anything? I am deeply envious of anyone who has not yet read this book and gets to experience it for the first time.
‘Netherland’ by Joseph O’Neill
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Hans van den Broek is a Dutch financial analyst living with his wife Rachel near the World Trade Center at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Although they are unharmed, their relationship flounders. Rachel flees with their young son to London. Hans remains, shattered: “My family, the spine of my days, had crumbled.” Is it only a trial separation, or is divorce a done deal?
He seeks solace in a boyhood pastime: cricket. On the pitch, he meets a charismatic Trinidadian, Chuck Ramkisson. We accompany Hans as he tries to deal with the fallout of 9/11, the death of his friend and the potential demise of his marriage. The Observer called O’Neill’s prose “gorgeous, ruminative … every sentence feels written, not typed.” It could be this, and its elegiac quality, that makes it feel like the spiritual twin toWhat I Loved.
‘The Post-Birthday World’ by Lionel Shriver
Harper Perennial
Lionel Shriver’s 2007 follow-up to her hit We Need to Talk About Kevin is captivating. Irina, a Russian-American children’s book illustrator in London, is married to Lawrence, a boring researcher at a prestigious think tank. Irina’s friend Jude is keen for Irina and Lawrence to meet her husband, the famous snooker player Ramsay Acton. As Irina meets Ramsay’s blue-grey eyes, she instantly feels “a jolt, a tiny touching of live wires.”
After the titular birthday, she has the opportunity to choose between two paths: an unknown, but chemistry-filled life with Ramsay, or the safe, secure life she has with boring old Lawrence (who, it turns out, is still capable of surprise — again, no spoilers as to whether the surprise is bad or good). If you’ve ever been in the position of choosing between two love interests, or ever wondered “should I stay or should I go?,” The Post-Birthday World will be irresistible.
‘How to End a Story’ by Helen Garner
Pantheon
Imagine being a writer of some success emerging from your second marriage. At last, a chance to focus on my work, you might think in her position. Not in this gripping, propulsive, cover-your-eyes, horror-adjacent thriller of a diary from the Australian author Helen Garner. She meets V, an established male writer from Sydney who she describes as “a small, white-faced, long-headed, warped figure. Weird, like something that has crept out of a dark hole.” Garner feels a “gong of terror” at the thought of seeing him again. “V’s quite a frumpy bloke, really,” she writes.
The (bewildering, to her reader) next entry drops the bombshell: “Okay, I’ve said it. I’m in love.” They marry. (Helen, why?!) That marks the halfway point in the collected diaries, a huge hit in Australia and now available in the U.S. for the first time. Helen and V seem locked in a titanic struggle: Artist versus Artist. Who will survive? Never before has someone reported with such acuity live from the scene of a crumbling marriage. It’s a must-read for anyone who has experienced a breakup.
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