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| The Story of a Marriage: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Andrew Sean Greer
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
Buy New: $9.25
You Save: $12.75 (58%)
New (44) Used (25) Collectible (1) from $9.21
Avg. Customer Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 6891
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 1.2 x 1
ISBN: 0374108668
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374108663
ASIN: 0374108668
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Far From Heaven, But Change is Coming April 30, 2008
13 out of 25 found this review helpful
Ever since The Stern Librarian read Andrew Sean Greer's last novel The Confessions of Max Tivoli (which appears on my Amazon list of 10 favorite novels), I have been haunted by the question of whether Greer exalts or despises love. The Story of a Marriage is the perfect coda to that earlier novel's proposition that everyone is the great love of someone's life--alas, that great love is rarely mutual. After reading his new novel, I am convinced that Greer is our greatest poet of love. This turns out to also be a book about war and race as well, but it is most powerful and moving in exploring the triangle of affections among Pearlie, Holland and Buzz. The image of the Golden Gate Bridge on the cover reminds me of the poster for a Douglas Sirk melodrama, and Greer evokes both the quaint, Mildred Pierce-ish feeling of 50's northern California, as well as the fog that intrudes from three wars: World War II, the Korean War and The Civil War. What is most remarkable is the way that Greer's repeated use of the words hope and change evokes our current political climate. The book's description of segregation is offhand yet absolutely crucial to the story he tells and the choices Pearlie makes. In this novel, there is no question that Greer feels reciprocal love is possible, even if the 50's was too soon for all kinds of marriage. The Stern Librarian (I am the great love of my Patrons' lives).
"But you know the heart: every night it grows a thorn." May 26, 2008
8 out of 16 found this review helpful
The 1950s are looked upon with some nostalgia, America's innocent days before the turbulence of the 60s. But for those who lived through them, the 1950s were defined by the end of a world war, the Korean conflict, nearing a close in 1953, mothers anguishing over broken children felled by polio, the execution of the Rosenburg's, and rigid social conventions, the country struggling, as ever, through the complications of post-war recovery. After stumbling across a childhood sweetheart with whom she shares an exceptional history, Pearlie is happy to accept when Holland Cook makes his endearing appeal, "I need you to marry me." Four years later, the couple resides in an area of San Francisco near the fog-shrouded Pacific Ocean, in a small bungalow, where Holland travels frequently for business and their young son is stricken by polio, restricted by the iron braces that support his legs. Whatever doubts she entertains fleeting, barely acknowledged, Pearlie is happy. Until a stranger comes to the door, a man from Holland's past, Charles "Buzz" Drumer.
When Holland returns from work, greeted by his wife and old friend, there is a subtle shift, a tremor in the foundation of Pearlie's well-tended marriage. She chooses to ignore the sense of dislocation that has entered the house with the stranger. There have been hints, Holland's spinster twin cousins, referred to as "the aunts", who warn Pearlie before the marriage that Holland has a weak heart, a disease for which there is no cure. Cautious and protective, Pearlie does everything in her power to avoid aggravating Holland's condition, a peaceful home, quiet, separate bedrooms because he has difficulty sleeping, even a barkless dog. Then, with Buzz, something changes, Pearlie's deliberate care somehow redundant with the advent of this man. A great sum of money is mentioned, $100,000, an unimaginable amount for a woman such as Pearlie, whose aspirations are simple and few. In 1953's rigid, conventional America an unassuming wife has no idea how to protect her family from an enemy she never could have imagined.
Greer's prose is so stunning, so lyrical in this exquisite novel, that it is impossible not to read very carefully, lingering over an image, a phrase, a shattering revelation. How relevant from the perspective of a new millennium, gender politics and racism the most potent brew of all, without a prayer in that era of hopeless ambitions and suppressed fears of "the enemy within", the country beginning a long and tumultuous affair with exposing others, those who might undermine American values by living in ways that lie outside the strict boundaries imposed by a rigid society. The heart of the novel is so subtle, so textured, that, above all, the reader is intimately aware of a marriage fractured by the intrusion of a stranger from the past. In a "war story of men who did not go to war", Pearlie engages in an interior skirmish that leaves her breathless, unable to articulate her own needs. Having settled always for the smallest portion of life's bounty, Pearlie is unprepared for the freedom of making a choice and the consequences of low expectations. Profoundly insightful, Greer's Pearlie is a remarkable feast for a hungry reader. Luan Gaines/ 2008.
 Disappointing storytelling June 4, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This was a heavily marketed book with an impressive theme and cover. Unfortunately, the storytelling did not live up to any of these. Pearlie was a woman living in a trance throughout the whole book. From Andrew Sean Greer's wordy, overly elaborate POV, Pearlie and any of the other characters did not connect to this reader at all. A startling and relevant topic, but very poor storytelling. I wish the book had been edited better.
 Dont Buy this book July 6, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
I bought this book because of the great reviews. However, this is pure
trash--not even worth a nod. Short 195 pages of nonsense. Some man marries a woman who turns out to be black (I didnt see that one coming) but he, in his not too distant past, slept with another man and the man
never got over such a thrill so he stalked the black woman's husband and
offered to buy him from her (slavery is illegal even love slaves) etc etc etc. On the trip to marriage bliss our black husband sleeps with some white woman who is engaged to some other white man and someone dies.
So sad, you dont give a s*** about anyone.
 For Better or For Worse? June 4, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
This was an odd book for me in that it's written with such delicate and intimate beauty,and yet I felt myself emotionally detached from the proceedings. Early on there are some revelations that literally caused me to take in a sharp intake of breath at their cleverness, and yet as the story unfolded, Pearlie's musings on love and the choices we make while beautifully written never completely got me invested. Greer is an interesting writer and between this and his previous book,'The Confessions of Max Tivoli', proves he has an inventive imagination. I just wish I could've connected a bit more.
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