Book Reviews
Andrew Sean Greer's much-praised previous novel, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, was an eerie "memoir" of someone born with the appearance of an old, wrinkled man who then ages backward, looking ever younger as he matures inwardly. John Updike found the book "enchanting, in the perfumed, dandified style of disenchantment brought to grandeur by Proust and Nabokov." Greer's new novel is equally praiseworthy, but the influence it evokes is less that of Proust or Nabokov than of Edgar Allan Poe.... A timeless story of conflicting loyalties, The Story of a Marriage has roots in the fiction of Poe's era, but, fittingly enough, its plot is firmly anchored in the vividly described America of the early 1950s—a seemingly serene era whose submerged social, racial and political tensions would soon create their own disruptions and upheavals.
Maggie Scarf - New York Times Book Review
From the beginning of this inspired, lyrical novel, the reader is pulled along by the attentive voice of Pearlie, a young African-American woman who travels west to San Francisco in search of a better life after growing up in a rural Kentucky town.... Mr. Greer's considerable gifts as a storyteller ascend to the heights of masters like Marilynne Robinson and William Trevor. In the hands of a lesser writer this narrative might have stumbled into a literary derivation of Annie Proulx's now famous short story "Brokeback Mountain." But instead Mr. Greer creates a moving story that is all his own via an intimate view of Pearlie's world, which has spun off its axis.... Mr. Greer seamlessly choreographs an intricate narrative that speaks authentically to the longings and desires of his characters.
S. Kirk Walsh - New York Times
The Story of a Marriage is just that, the chronicle of one marriage, closely and elegantly examined...a plot that deepens as surprises explode unexpectedly and terrifyingly. The Story of a Marriage is more than worth the reader's attention. It's thoughtful, complex and exquisitely written.
Carolyn See - Washington Post
Greer (The Confessions of Max Tivoli, 2004) sets this emotionally wrenching tale in a U.S. rife with strife—recovering from one war, mired in yet another, and grappling daily with the prickly issue of race. A haunting, thought-provoking novel about the liabilities of love. —Allison Block
Booklist
As he demonstrated in the imaginative The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Greer can spin a touching narrative based on an intriguing premise. Even a diligent reader will be surprised by the revelations twisting through this novel and will probably turn back to the beginning pages to find the oblique hints hidden in Greer's crystalline prose. In San Francisco in 1953, narrator Pearlie relates the circumstances of her marriage to Holland Cook, her childhood sweetheart. Pearlie's sacrifices for Holland begin when they are teenagers and continue when the two reunite a few years later, marry and have an adored son. The reappearance in Holland's life of his former boss and lover, Buzz Drumer, propels them into a triangular relationship of agonizing decisions. Greer expertly uses his setting as historical and cultural counterpoint to a story that hinges on racial and sexual issues and a climate of fear and repression. Though some readers may find it overly sentimental, this is a sensitive exploration of the secrets hidden even in intimate relationships, a poignant account of people helpless in the throes of passion and an affirmation of the strength of the human spirit.
Publishers Weekly
World War II shapes and complicates a young married couple's shared and separate lives in this latest from California author Greer (The Confessions of Max Tivoli, 2004, etc.). What narrator Pearlie Cook says of her introverted spouse Holland ("We think we know the ones we love.") applies also to herself, in one of several surprise twists taken by Greer's slowly unfolding plot. We learn early on that she met shy, handsome neighbor Holland Cook in grade school in their native Kentucky. After Holland enlisted and went overseas, Pearlie moved to California, where she volunteered for a military organization, then married the wounded returning soldier (further burdened by congenital illness), devoted herself to creating a peaceful, loving environment and bore him a son (who would be stricken with poliomyelitis). Her family's story becomes entangled with that of "Buzz" Drumer, Holland's hospital roommate, whose disclosures overturn everything Pearlie thought she knew, and confirm her determination to protect her husband and son—though, she'll eventually acknowledge, she has managed instead "to step on and alter a war, and a marriage, and the course of several lives." Greer creates numerous moving moments, but they're often obscured by emotionally charged figurative language and imperfectly dramatized expressions of enlightened social and political attitudes. (If only George Orwell had edited this book...) Little more can be said without revealing the novel's crucial surprises—except that the author simply tries too hard, and the reader balks at its surplus of sentimentality. Greer's best feature as a novelist is his willingness to keep trying new things. Let's hope his next book avoids the worst excesses of this one.
Kirkus Reviews