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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 (€17.38)
Buy New: $10.50 (€8.29)
You Save: $11.50 (€9.09) (52%)
Buy New/Used from $4.40 (€3.48)
Avg. Customer Rating:  (33 reviews)
Sales Rank: 3579
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
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
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...
 "We think we know the ones we love, and though we should not be surprised to find that we don't, it is heartbreaking nonetheless November 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Story of a Marriage is a well-plotted novel about a relationship triangle, that of a woman, her husband, and his friend. The woman, Pearlie Ash, meets a childhood sweetheart named Holland Cook one day on a beach after WWII. In spite of discouragement from his aunts (who are actually his cousins), she chooses to marry him. Their son, Sonny, contracts polio at age three. Four years into their marriage, Buzz Drumer, a man who knew Holland during the war, shows up. Over time, he reveals details of his secretive past and his relationship with her husband. Thirty years later, two of the three reunite. Although there seemed to be a statistically high number of conscientious objectors (of which I am not a fan) in a story with so few characters and pages, that fact is overshadowed by the originality of the story. Author Andrew Sean Greer does a fabulous job at plotting, and especially in at his perfectly timed revelations.
Also good: The Three Junes by Julia Glass, The Hours by Michael Cunningham and Close Range by Annie Proulx.
 Unbelievably cliche October 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It seems this story has polarized readers. Some love it, while others intensely dislike the book. I fall into the latter camp. I thought I was really going to like it initially, but then the story went way over the top into unbelievability for me. I found myself disliking it more and more as the pages progressed. It's really almost impossible to speak about the issues I had with the book without giving away some huge spoilers, but I will give you a taste of what it's about.
Holland and Pearlie Cook are childhood sweethearts with a son and a dog that doesn't bark. Everything is going along fine until one day Buzz, a man from Holland's past, shows up at the door and changes everything. Set in the 50's and San Francisco.
 Intimate and surprising October 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I completely enjoyed this book. It has been a long time since I have read a book that has so many unexpected twists and turns. Lately it seem I have a good idea what is going to happen be for I read it. Well not this book.
This is such an intimately written story. I felt the pain as if it were my own. The words on the pages could have been my own thoughts. The descriptions of San Francisco in the 1950 were well done. I could taste the salty air, hear the fog horn and feel the fog. But most of all I enjoy this story about love.
Microfiche research does not a gook book make... September 13, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Improbable boatload of circumstances (black woman, homosexual black man with a secret homosexual white lover, son with polio, from Kentucky, during the war, in San Francisco, ) aside, I heard an excerpt of this book read recently. And, then I heard the author say that he was "surprised at how much information there was on microfiche" to help with his book.
Well, that's obvious. The author took a nightmare of circumstances that is completely unbelievable. Come on, a black woman plotting with her black husband's white lover? And you say she is from Kentucky, but she speaks in the most flowery language I've ever heard--more like out of a Harlequin romance book. And, then you tell me that the son has polio, but you don't ever talk about it? And, that isn't even half of the problem that I had with the book.
My point, historically, is that the author really just added a few microfiche facts here and there that he clearly found by reading old newspapers. The City does not come alive with these references. Instead, the references are more like footnotes on a rotten "what you shouldn't write after Max Tivoli" kind of a book.
 A multi-layered shimmer that bedazzles August 22, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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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