Early Reviewers: A Happy Marriage
A Happy Marriage
by Rafael Yglesias
(Scribner, 2009)
A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias came to me through the Librarything Early Reviewers program. This story of a husband's last days with his dying wife and his memories of their 30-year marriage is told from the heart. Unfortunately, the reader is nothing but a passive observer to this bittersweet tale. The narrative stays cleanly in place behind a plate of glass and we do not have to get ourselves messy with end-of-life issues or conflicts. All is taken care of by the very humble, warm-hearted narrator. The language, the lack of dramatic surprises, and frankly the lack emotional spikes in this book made the word "happy" in the title all too apt (and not ironic, as I mistakenly assumed). These are sad events in the lives of well-heeled and completely normal people, the kind of events we see all too much in our daily lives. I need much more from my fiction.